


We Do Not Sow

by kihadu



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Hawke, F/M, M/M, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-01 19:28:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 44
Words: 32,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1047703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kihadu/pseuds/kihadu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s a Tevinter elf with lyrium carved through his veins, and she’s a Rivaini pirate who had a city set on fire in her name, and he’s an Antivan Crow with a pair of fine boots and a lewd grin to his face. They fight crime.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> A bunch of short pieces that create a discontinuous story from Fenris meeting Hawke all the way through to The Last Straw, and beyond. 
> 
> The title is from Game of Thrones, House Greyjoy, house of seafarers and pirates.
> 
> Sex will (probably) not be explicit, Sebastian/Fenris is one-sided from Sebastian, and no one is going to be absolutely evil. It will follow canon for ~10k.

 

 

He’s a Tevinter elf with lyrium carved through his veins, and she’s a Rivaini pirate who had a city set on fire in her name, and he’s an Antivan Crow with a pair of fine boots and a lewd grin to his face. They fight crime.

Or they commit crime, or see crime happening and decide to take a detour to avoid the crime, or make their own laws and decide that it’s crime for you to be wearing that hat, we’ll be taking it, thanks.

Kirkwall is ashes behind them and although they started running now they’re just sailing, hunting treasure or sea monsters and sometimes - most of the time, really - hunting slavers.

That is now.

This is also now, but an earlier now. A now before Kirkwall crumbled, before the Templars and the Mages went head to head…

There is no such thing as a single story. This could just as well be a tale of Sebastian Vael, Prince-gone-Chantry-Brother struggling to cope with the life he finds himself living. Or Anders, who deserves a story; at least, he deserves to be more than a legend revered and hated.

All of them, really, deserve their own song sung in the Halls of the Heroes. This is not even all of it, merely pieces of a tale that is but a single thread in the tapestry of the universe. And though this one is about pirates, it starts on land, and it starts with Hawke. 

 

 


	2. Slave and Brother

When Hawke first meets Fenris it’s in the same manner she meets most of her friends: blood seeping into cracked bricks and Death sidling up and whispering into their ears, _you next, you. next._ only that Hawke has walked with Death for too long now to bother listening to His threats, and Fenris has stamped his way up from the darkest pits and he’ll be damned before he lets himself be taken before his time.

Fenris is speaking, he tries to apologise for the deception of the circumstances for Hawke being there but she interrupts.

“No, no, shh, stop.”

“I really feel that I have to -” he tries again.

“Shush. Fenris, you said? I could use a sword like yours.”

“Could you ever,” whispers Isabela into Hawke's ear. 

“I’ve two mage friends,” says Hawke, ignoring the pirate. “If you can button up for long enough to stand beside them will you fight with me?”

“I am in your debt,” he says simply.

“Awesome,” she nods with determination. “Come on, then, trot on.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” hisses Anders. Bethany nods, both of them eyeing the elf, who is glaring back with unbridled aggression. Hawke slaps Fenris on the shoulder and he nearly leaps out of his skin.

“Easy on the mage-hatin’, ‘kay?” she asks.

“They are not to be trusted,” he says. His voice drags through the air like steel spikes through flesh.

“And if they turn into demons I’ll slaughter ‘em, don’t worry.” Anders and Bethany both look at her, aghast. Hawke shrugs. “You know I would. Abominations aren’t exactly fun at dinner parties.”

Hawke’s not worried about her blase attitude; at least, she’s long since gotten past the bother of tiptoeing around her sister. Mages are dangerous, but so are archers and swordsmen and ogres. Anything tries to kill Hawke, she’ll kill it back, but so long as her sister’s got her proper skin on she’s not about to do anything.

She bullies Fenris into coming on their next jaunt, and the next, and soon she’s dragging him to the Hanged Man or up to Hightown with Isabela in tow, so that Isabela can steal them lunch from one of the stalls and they can eat it looking out from the city and pretending they’re not in Kirkwall.

Even Hawke doesn’t realise that she’s never without him until one day he’s laid up in bed with a cold (that he refuses to let her tell anyone else about) and Varric looks at the space beside her.

“Where’s the elf?”

“Uh,” she says. “Busy. Um. Buying cushions. For his bed.”

“Fenris? With cushions?” snorts Anders. “Surely he’d prefer an uncomfortable chair in front of the fire where he can brood.”

“Nope,” says Hawke. She’s the only one who’s seen where Fenris sleeps. “There’s cushions.”

“How do you know this?” Varric asks suspiciously.

“Should I be jealous?” asks Isabela.

“Of him, or me?” winks Hawke. “We’ve got to stop by the Chantry, then down to the Coast.”

“I hate this city,” groans Isabela.

“How do you think I feel?” grouses Varric. “My legs are a lot shorter than yours.”

They stop by the Chantry, and Sebastian looks Hawke steadily in the eye, ignoring Isabela, ignoring all that skin, and asks where Fenris is.

“Is he really that attached to me?”

“I’ve never seen him without you,” states Sebastian simply. The others are distracted by some shiny thing and Hawke takes the chance to lean close to Sebastian.

“He’s sick, and he trusts you. Can you take him something?”

It is his new duty to help those in need. “What does he like?”

“Sweet tea, perhaps some porridge. If you could talk with him a while, too.”

“You care for him,” says Sebastian, in a tone of voice that relays his surprise. “He’s so… prickly.”

“He’s had a hard life,” Hawke shrugs. She doesn’t get why everyone is bewildered that she’d be friends with Fenris while she’s standing between Anders and Merrill, but Fenris is obviously abrasive while the other two keep their secrets close to their hearts. “He likes you, though.”

Sebastian's surprise shows on his face. “Does he? Really?" He didn't think Fenris liked anything except for Hawke. 

“Just don’t be too religious at him.”

 

Sebastian takes a break from his duties at the Chantry to visit Fenris’ mansion. First he thought he wouldn’t be able to find it, but in the end it’s easy: most of the mansions are well kept, while Fenris’ looks like dead skin stretched over old bones. The door rattles when he knocks, and the tiles on the floor shift under his weight when he walks in. There’s a stale stench in the air, death and rotted flesh, and the damp, bitter smell of mushrooms and mould. Sebastian takes his basket of offerings through the house and climbs the stairs tentatively, bothered by what he might see. He’s been in bad places but he’s always wanted to leave them soon after; he’s never thought to live there.

Fenris is in bed, curled up in a nest of pillows and blankets as though he were a cat. He coughs, and it takes him several goes before he manages to croak out a greeting.

“Hawke suggested I come see if you have need of me. She said she’s likely not to be back tonight.”

“Where?” Fenris manages to say. Sebastian hands him a glass of water and Fenris swallows it painfully.

“Coast, I believe.”

“Who?”

“Isabela, Anders, Varric.”

Fenris makes a disgruntled noise. “I’m not going to be very entertaining for you.”

“No matter,” Sebastian says lightly. He’s only glad that the elf hasn’t killed him, or kicked him out. He’s never seen the elf so still, normally he’s shifting from toe to heel and foot to foot, flexing his arms and twisting his head. Now, he blinks at Sebastian a little sadly. “I brought food?” he offers. “And a book.” Fenris narrows his eyes, suspicious. “There isn’t much in the way of casual reading in the Chantry,” Sebastian apologises. “But I think you’ll enjoy this.”

Fenris sips the soup until his head is too heavy to sit up, and Sebastian reads to him. Although he does not much want to admit it, it is soothing to have the man there, and when he wakes from an accidental nap he finds more soup on the side and the fire burning.

Sebastian checks on him in the morning, and finds Fenris much better, shirt off and swinging his sword in great sweeping arcs to loosen his shoulders.

“Do you use a sword?” he asks, instead of hello. Sebastian’s mouth is dry. He’s used to beauty, but he didn’t expect this, Fenris so unembarrassed and so bare in front of him.

“I am afraid not.”

“Pity,” says Fenris. “Hawke will no doubt be too tired to practice with me on her return.”

“You fight with her?” Sebastian gives him a look, and Fenris chuckles.

“She is terrifying, I agree, but it’s good to test my skills against hers.”

“You’re pretty scary yourself.”

“Thanks,” says Fenris in a dry voice. His head is heavy, and he is still a little sick. He sits down, and pulls on a shirt. Sebastian chastises himself for the disappointment he feels, and they eat lunch together, bread that Sebastian has brought, and chicken and a few tomatoes from the Chantry garden.


	3. Lyre Lion Liar

 

 

“And then the nursemaid says to the lyre… Wait, no, I’ve got this all wrong.”

“Could you mean a lion, Daisy?”

“No, no, I’m sure it was a musical instrument.”

“A flute?” suggests Hawke.

“Face it, Kitten, you’re not very good at telling jokes,” says Isabela.

“But all of you are.” They’re walking up stairs from Lowtown, Anders left behind and Merrill falling in with them. The sun is setting, dragging long shadows across the city.

“You’re funny enough,” says Varric kindly. “But the jokes you make are on the fly.”

“Which really is a much better skill,” adds Hawke. 

 

 

 


	4. Not Like That

Hawke squints at Fenris, a little bit back on the beach, while Fenris carefully arranges his armour on his shirt so that the sand doesn’t touch it. “Fenny, hun, this isn’t what we’re being paid for.”

“Are we getting paid?” he asks suspiciously.

“Well,” Hawke begins. “No. No we’re not. This is a venture for a favour.” The others were around the corner, starting a fire and ignoring them.

“Then swimming isn’t a problem.”

“What will the others think?” she asks, but she’s already undoing buckles and pulling at laces.

“When have you cared what they think?” Fenris calls over his shoulder, and rushes into the waves.

The Wounded Coast is an awful place for a swim. There’s broken ships and old bones, and a too-heavy wave can send you flying into rusted metal. Still Fenris and Hawke dashed into the water, and it’s cold and they shriek and laugh, and Hawke splashes Fenris and he splashes her back. He’d die if the others saw him like this, but if it’s just Hawke he can do anything. She makes him feel like he can do anything. They play in the waves until there’s the smell of cooking, and the others raise their eyebrows at their wet hair and flushed cheeks, but Hawke skitters down into the sand and Fenris falls down beside her, half resting on her leg.

“It’s like that, is it?” asks Varric softly.

“No,” says Hawke.

“Not even close,” adds Fenris, which is true. It’s nothing like what Varric understands, because Hawke is nothing like Varric understands. She throws herself back into his lap and grins up at him, her blue eyes less piercing than Sebastian’s.

“They don’t get it,” she says later, as they curl in close together. It’s for warmth, at least, that’s the theory, though Varric refuses to share space with anyone who isn’t Bianca, leaving Isabela crushed next to Hawke.

“Don’t get what, pretty?” mummers Isabela.

“You don’t get us,” says Hawke, but she doesn’t explain further and Isabela falls asleep with the distinct feeling that she is being very unfairly left out of something.

 

Fenris wakes with his fingers tight around Hawke’s. The fire is ashes and the sky is a smoky grey. He pulls himself up and buckles on his armour, and sees Varric yawning and waking, and Isabela’ place is empty. He finds some privacy first to relieve himself, sees Isabela.

She is watching the sea, boots firmly planted in the sand and wind whipping at the short whitish shirt. Fenris does admire the expanse of skin visible, primarily because he knows that Isabela does not mind, and stands beside her. She speaks unbidden.

“Once I swore to never see a tide from this side of the beach more than twice a year. And now I have seen it six times just this month.”

“We spent an inordinate amount of time here,” Fenris agrees. “You want to go back to that life.”

“When I have a ship.”

“How much is a ship?” asks Fenris. Isabela chuckles.

“More than your boots are worth,” she says. She sighs, then, sad and slow. The water reflects in her eyes, and she shakes her head and turns back to the camp. Fenris looks at the water and tries to see what she sees, but there’s nothing except white-capped waves and jagged rocks.


	5. Deep Roads

“Fen! Babes! What have you done?” The cry is loud and clear across the cavern, and Varric jolts to a stop. Mostly, he can’t believe his ears. Fenris can’t, either. He tolerates Hawke’s casual manner of speaking to him, but not where the others can hear.

“What have I done?” he asks, alarmed.

“You’re bleeding.”

Hawke rushes up to him and Fenris lifts his arm and examines the underside; from elbow to underarm there’s a gash of dried blood that now that he notices he can feel, and it hurts.

“Why the hell didn’t we bring Andy?”

“Mages ruin everything,” says Fenris. There’s blood down the length of Fenris’ arm, and now that there’s cool hands on his skin he feels a bit faint from the blood loss. He thinks but doesn’t say it: if only Bethany were here. But that event in the Deep Roads is too familiar, Bethany’s body still warm behind them.

“Varric,” snaps Hawke. “Bandages.”

“Alright, alright. I didn’t know you had pet names for each other.”

“Yes, I call him babes, he calls me pigheaded. It’s all very romantic,” snaps Hawke. She gets irritated easily, and being a million miles from home with a dead sister isn’t helping matters at all.

She bandages Fenris’ arm with care, though, and if they had water to spare she’d wash the blood away herself. Varric watches them carefully.

“Am I going to be invited to a wedding soon?”

“We’re not together,” growls Hawke. She picks up her pack and marches on.

“You’re not fooling anyone, Broody,” says Varric.

“You’re the fool,” Fenris says, but without ire. “We’re really not like that. She’s not like that.” Varric looks at him blankly, and Fenris sighs, unhappy at being forced to speak the words when Hawke has never had to do so much as that with him. He just knows her. “She’s not interested in sex.”

“But you’re basically in love anyway,” says Varric. Fenris tilts his head, rolls his shoulder and feels the pain in his arm.

“No,” he says eventually. “I think you’re still wrong.”


	6. Home Again

Fenris is never without Hawke, and Hawke is never without Fenris. They travel together, joined at the hip, from the peak of Sondermount to the depths of the Deep Roads. He’s there when Bethany falls and he’s there when her mother lays the blame entirely at Hawke’s door.

He’s there when Hawke finds her mother stitched up and dead. It’s a heavy day, the sky ready to fall on them, and he walks her to his house.

The air smells like it should on this night, dark with death and sour with tears. He has no wine with him, no offers to give. There’s nothing that will help. He leaves her in his room and prepares a bath, but when he comes to get her she does not move.

He sits down, the mattress bending under his weight and the quilt shifting. He sits, and it’s silent. He wants to speak but has no words, so he puts out a hand, just holds it there with the palm up. The lines are bright against the darkness of the mood in the room, and it’s a while before she’s able to will herself into moving.

Hawke will touch him in a friendly way, a hand on his arm, or leaning forward to flick his hair out of his eyes. She pokes him in the side, callused fingers brushing lightly on him. He’s ticklish, and it’s an effort to keep from breaking that news to the others. He knows Isabela would have a field day with that fact (though, when she does know, she’s careful about it, pressing her hand firm against his waist as she slides it down from chest to hip…)

When she does move she grips him tight, draws in a long breath, and leans her head against his bare knuckles; he’s long out of the habit of wearing his armour in her house. He slides closer along the bed, and pulls her tight.

“I have no one,” she whispers. “Dad, and Bethany, and Carver,” she shudders, and cannot add her mother to that list. Fenris tightens his hand around hers, and lays the other over it.

“You have me,” says Fenris, and realises immediately he must correct himself. “You have us.”

 

He leaves her when she is sleeping, and marches down the thousands of steps to Darktown.

“Anders!” he bellows. He thumps his fist on the door again, and, when he finds it locked and still unanswered, he shoves through it, half lyrium and half brute-force. “You coward,” he yells, grabbing Anders by his coat and hauling him up from where he was sleeping.

“Wh-a-?” Anders stutters awake, blinking at the blue glow of Fenris and trying to recoil back in fear.

“You stayed here and she died because of you.”

“Let go of me,” growls Anders, bringing his magic together.

“Not until you tell me why!” Fenris swings Anders, pushes him against a wall, his feet dangling. Anders shoots a ball of energy into Fenris and he falls back. Anders drops, steadying himself on the wall.

“Why what?”

“Why did not you not come with us to the Deep Roads?”

“I hate that fucking place,” Anders yells back. “If Hawke had asked I would have gone.”

“But she didn’t, because she knows you’re afraid.”

“Is that so wrong?”

“Bethany died.” Fenris spits the words out, knows they’ll hurt Anders hardest said like this, told to him by _Fenris_.

It has the desired affect: Anders recoils, leaning back into the wall, face aghast.

“No one told me,” he says. “I didn’t know. When did you get back?”

“Today,” says Fenris. “And you’re sleeping soundly while she’s-” Anders cuts him off.

“How is she?”

“If you cared you’d ask her yourself.”

“I’ll go now,” says Anders, looking around for his coat. Fenris tries to dissuade him, tries to tell him that Hawke is sleeping, but Anders insists, and on the way up the city Isabela falls in step.

“I heard,” she says softly. “How are you?” Fenris grunts.

“I’d be better if Anders had been there.”

“Varric said it was the taint,” says Isabela. “There was nothing to be done.”

Fenris only grunts again, and leads the way into his mansion.

“She’s sleeping,” he repeats when Anders asks if he can see her.

“Please.”

Fenris would rather no one see where he sleeps, but he allows it because he knows Hawke will prefer them being there.

“Does Merrill know?”

“I did not have the chance to tell the blood mage." He leans forward and brushes hair from Hawke’s closed eyes, a motion much more tender than his voice.

“If it was the taint I could have done nothing.”

“She was already injured. She was limping. If you’d been there you could have healed her. She could have jumped out of the way. I could have jumped in…” The bandages on his arm are dried and itchy; his arm still aches. There are other wounds on him, and Hawke is neither washed nor healed. He gestures at her. “Could you..?” he asks.

“You desire my help, but not my person,” mutters Anders. He holds his hands over Hawke anyway and examines her body with tendrils of magic. She groans in her sleep and Fenris starts, eyes flashing in warning, but then she stills and Anders steps back.

“She is well,” he says. “I would wait. Is there a place I may sit?”

Fenris finds them chairs because it gives him something to do, and they sit in silence and watch Hawke sleep.

“What was it like?” asks Isabela suddenly. The air of the room is too much, and she does not like sitting. She likes none of this, but the sitting and the silence are both immediate problems. She considers, very briefly, straddling Fenris. At the least it would turn his attention onto a different kind of problem. Instead she stands and stretches, ignoring the boys but knowing that Anders watches her out of the corner of his eye. Fenris, though. He only has eyes for Hawke.

“The Deep Roads?” asks Fenris. Against the silence his voice is dark and bitter. She wants to swallow it. “They were dark, and they were deep, and there were darkspawn.”

“Not a good holiday.”

“No, Isabela, it wasn’t.”

She retreats. She was never good at holding vigil, and Hawke is no exception to that rule.

Anders remains. Fenris thinks it is out of guilt, but when Hawke wakes and sees him there she gives the closest thing to a smile she’s managed yet. She holds out a hand, and Anders clasps it.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I should have been there. I could have done something.”

“It was the taint,” says Hawke. She still sounds tired, and takes the water Fenris offers. “What could you have done?”

“I could have been there for you.”


	7. Guilty To The Soul

Isabela is a near permanent fixture in the Hanged Man. It means Sebastian doesn't feel bothered by going there, but it does mean anyone who has a problem with her can find her with ease. When he pushes open the door she’s a blade against one man’s neck and the other pointed behind her, keeping a steady pressure on another’s crotch.

“Are we really going to have a problem here, boys?” she asks.

“Isabela?”

The distraction is enough that the man in front dodges from the knife, and the other falls backwards. Both of them run out of the door, and Sebastian makes no attempt to stop them. The patrons are used to the shining armour, or afraid of those eyes, perhaps, and pay him no mind.

“I take it those men deserved what they got.”

“Which was nothing more than a few bruises,” she says. “Thanks to you.” Sebastian cannot find it within himself to feel guilt at that. What do you want?”

“Merrill was looking for you.”

“Chantry doing some work in the Alienage?” she asks lightly.

“You know, I’ve never liked that name,” says Sebastian when she falls into step beside him. He’s very tall, but she’s happy to squint up at him. “The elves are not aliens.”

“I suppose you befriend many elves.”

“I have Fenris,” says Sebastian. Isabela snorts.

“Fenris is closest thing to a shemlan without cutting off his ears. Elvishness isn’t just in appearance. It’s in your soul.”

“You believe in souls?” Sebastian perks up.

“Easy there, big boy,” laughs Isabela. “I’m not going to have you lecturing me about the Maker again.”

“But you do believe in souls,” he presses.

“I believe in an essence,” she says. She doesn’t want this conversation, it’s too far from her usual line of speech. But she sighs, and continues, because this is the closest she’ll ever see Sebastian to being satisfied. “Fenris’ elvishness is only skin-deep. Like Varric’s dwarvishness. We shemlen don’t get it, but the other elves know that Fenris isn’t one of them. It’s like the difference between a believer and a Brother. A sailor and a pirate. It’s who you are.”

“You think my being a Brother is who I am?”

“I think you’re feeling guilty, and you’re paying penance,” says Isabela. They’re at the Alienage, and Sebastian’s glad to have the conversation left behind. He feels guilty. He feels it all the time, guilt that he survived, guilt that he wasn’t enough for his father, guilt that he’s not doing enough to pay for his crimes… The Chantry is not what he wants, though the work is good and he wakes everyday happy enough. It’s not in a bed with three other people, though, sticky from sweat and drinks, scalp sore from having his hair pulled and arse sore from worse. The satisfaction he finds now is a different sort, but he knows what Isabela is saying: it only goes skin deep.


	8. A Choice

The years pass. The city crumbles and burns, and Isabela leaves and returns, and Hawke duels the Arishok. It’s not a time any of them enjoy remembering, so we’ll skip over it for their sake.

Fenris never imagined years would pass, not for him and especially not here but when Hawke asks him one day if he’d like to move he doesn’t know where he’d go. Everything he knows is here, but it’s not complacency that keeps him. It’s comfort, and safety, and friendship.

Fenris walks with certain steps on a path he’s often travelled, down through the city to the Hanged Man. He sits, and Isabela winks at him across the table while Hawke pats him on the arm and fills a cup for him, and with the certainty from these two women he can almost feel settled - never safe, but settled - even with the Abomination and the Blood Mage sitting at the table with him.

When Isabela comments on the green of his eyes and wonders out loud if his mouth feels as good as it looks, it does not bother him, not like it used to. At first he didn’t know how to respond and now he knows he does not have to. It’s just her way, flirting with anything that catches her eye. He knows that if he grabs her wrist now, right in this moment, when she is standing from the table with a grin and a yawn, that he could find himself between her legs within minutes and there would be no demands. He also knows that when he does not, the disappointment in her eyes is fleeting, and she is quickly drawn to other ventures.

She never stops flirting with him, and some days he almost goes to find her, but he doesn’t. He isn’t even sure why anymore, only that he’s a creature of habit and his habits do not include Isabela. She’s so obvious about it that even Merrill understands, but Fenris is no longer embarrassed by the attention. It’s comforting, in a way, to be wanted so obviously. At least it takes the guesswork out of it; he’ll never be the mess of uncertainty that Aveline was about Donnic.

One day he looks at his stash of coins - Hawke insists on robbing everybody she finds while Isabela robs the living, and they share their coin, and other days he wins at cards, and then he follows Hawke everywhere on every job and always gets a cut - and realises he could take to the Rose if he wanted. It’s something he’s never wanted, but he’s never had the money to do so much as refuse. It’s a shock that’s he accumulated wealth, that’s he’s accumulated possessions and a life: he buys his own food and sleeps in his own bed, wears clothes he chose and plans his own days.

He stares at the money, overwhelmed by the realisation that he can make his own choices.

He doesn’t go to the Rose of course - paying for flesh is a grotesque idea to him - but he does go to fill his bath with hot water, and sinks into the water with a contented sigh. It has been a slow process, this realisation that he is free (and there’s a part of him that giggles and shrieks, while the rest tells himself to keep it down, keep it down, he’ll be listening, he’s watching, and he’ll punish us for laughter, but that part is getting quieter and quieter, mere whispers in his mind).

He is alone and he is free, and he closes his eyes and tiptoes his fingertips down a muscled stomach to brush his half-hard cock - and immediately Hawke knocks on the bathroom door and opens it without waiting for an answer. There’s a book in her hand, and she sits with scarcely a hello. The chair she sits in is one she’s sat in before, with the exact same intention. Fenris is getting better at reading, but it is far nicer to have the words laid out in her voice and so he does not resent her the intrusion so much. He closes his eyes and listens to the story, laughs at her attempts at different voices, and lets himself drift into a different life.

“Hanged Man tonight?” she asks when she has finished the chapter.

“Perhaps,” he says. His mind is split between the story she was telling and the weight of his cock and thinking, also, about how much wine he has in the basement, and if he’d like another cushion for his bed, and how long it’s been since he took a whetstone to his sword. Fenris has never been like Isabela, never had his physical needs high on a list of priorities.

“Please,” says Hawke. “Anders will pout if you don’t.”

Fenris gives her a steady look, and Hawke laughs. Anders and he… They’re not friends. They’ll never be friends. But they’re not so aggressively unfriendly that Hawke worries about travelling with them together.

“I suppose I could make my way down all those stairs,” he replies, lying back in the cooling water. She grins; he can never say no to her, and she can never refuse him. He thinks that this is what siblings are like, but he has not had much to prove that to him. None of them have had family that seemed to work, but now they have each other. Even, Fenris will begrudgingly admit, even Anders is part of that family. A distant cousin, though. Very distant.

He goes to the Hanged Man with part of him unsatisfied, and he nods at them all, ignores Merrill and Anders by habit, and sits opposite Isabela in the chair that seems to be his. She runs her eyes down him in her usual way, quirks her lips appreciatively. It’s her habit, too, and he is long used to her advances, but today he notices. He does not know why, but he feels her gaze on him. The bath was cold, his skin unmapped by another’s hands.

The way she looks at him now is like a heated caress.

He looks back.

He’s looked at her often, knows what she looks like and has followed her movements through battle or across the bar. It’s hard not to look at her, she makes herself an attraction for all kinds of attention, but he’s never before met her eye. He only looks Hawke in the eye, sometimes Anders when the mage has overstepped some bound and needs to be glared back into his corner.

He’d never though brown eyes could be so beautiful, and these are that and more. They’re eyes made to fuck you across a bar, but there’s a dark look to them that reminds him of how often she is covered in blood and grinning that grin of hers… He runs his tongue over his lips and wonders what it would be like to devour that mouth, what it would be like to have metal warmed by her skin bumping against his face, what she’d be like pushing against him. She’s all pirate and all fighter, takes what she wants and what she wants is everything.

It makes him nervous, but tonight that nervousness tangles with something else and she meets his eyes with a startled look. The others are talking and not noticing, but between the two of them there’s a sudden shift, a change in what is and is not done. He inclines his head, and she frowns, tilts her head on its side slightly, curious, not certain if she’s reading him right. He doesn’t know what to do to make his intentions clear but when his eyes drop to her mouth, her lips, she gets it. She leans back in her seat, and nothing at all is said.

The night is not a long one, and Fenris is glad. There’s been a boot nudging at his foot all night sliding up the inside of his leg, and brown eyes across the table making more pointed advances.

Varric has some business he must attend to and he hustles them out and downstairs, where Fenris is accidentally dragged into conversation Donnic and some other guards. When he next looks up only Isabela is left, stuck to the bar like she was born there. She feels him looking at her, and turns to see him at a table now empty of soldiers.

“I take it you’re staying.”

“For an hour, or two,” he says. His mouth tastes like whiskey and he tastes his teeth, wondering if he’ll disappoint her. He has no idea. There’s panic. He has no idea what he’s doing, this is out of order, it’s not what he does -

“Or three,” she purrs. She eyes his sharp hand and takes his wrist instead. Her hand is cool, but it brushes the red ribbon tied there. She’s seen it before, and wondered what it meant. “What about Hawke?”

They still don’t understand, so Fenris shakes his head. “She’s not a part of this.”

“Well, then,” she grins, and juts out a hip. “Come on. Let me show you what I can do.”

That was the first time.

Fenris had thought, perhaps, that it would only be that one time. He felt too forceful, too demanding. He’d gone to her because he wanted something specific, and with her brash honesty he didn’t feel ashamed for wanting.

It’s not nice sex, not easy and sweet like two people wanting to breathe love into the other’s soul. It’s sex. It’s sweaty and tangled limbs and bloodied bruises from nails dug into skin. She takes him to bed like she’s fighting a duel, and he gives as good as he gets.

The others notice immediately, and Anders sneers.

“Thought you had better sense,” he says.

“Orlaisan Empress, Antivan pirate, Tevinter elf,” Isabela counts them off on her fingers, and leaves none untouched. She grins at Anders. “Danger is as danger does. Maker knows you’re too tame for me.”

Anders grumbles and backs away, back to Hawke’s side. She nudges his shoulder in apology, but doesn’t pass judgement on Isabela’s reaction. Hawke’s already spoken to Fenris, and she’s not going to get involved.

 

Sebastian gives Fenris a strange look when they next meet each other. “I heard you and Isabela,” he begins. His voice is smooth and his eyes stare right down into Fenris’ soul. Fenris stares back, a rare action that has the Brother frowning and leaning away.

“I only hope that you,” he touches his chest, over his heart, indicating what he means, “are safe,” says Sebastian.

“Between Hawke and her I doubt I’ll ever know the meaning of safe again,” he growls. Sebastian takes the warning for what it is, and retreats in his judgement.

“Life would be very dull without women,” Sebastian allows.

“You miss it?” asks Fenris.

Sebastian is quiet a while before answering, because although this is Fenris and not Isabela he is talking to, they are not exactly friends. Not exactly unfriendly, either; the Brother has no idea what to call Fenris, and Fenris in turn does not know how to label his relationship with the man.

“Sometimes,” he says. His voice is tight. “But this is my path. I have made my choices.”

“I respect them,” says Fenris honestly. “So long as you respect mine.”

“I do. I admire what you have done for yourself. I only wish I were so strong. I think all I have done is run away and made it seem noble.”

“You make the choices you can live with,” says Fenris. Sebastian feels as though he is drowning; he forces the next words out through a mouth made of glass.

“And Isabela is yours?” Fenris chuckles.

“I think so. She certainly demands nothing, yet she gives me what I want.”

Sebastian looks away, refusing to meet Fenris’ eyes as he speaks. “Then I’m glad for you.”


	9. The Reversed Star

 

 

Death continues to stalk through Kirkwall and Hawke does her best to keep Him directed towards those who deserve it most. Anders sees that Sebastian is friends with Fenris, who is friends with Hawke and Isabela, and Isabela is friends with Merrill and Varric, and he retreats within himself. Even sitting at a table while they drink he feels cut off from them, a stranger with a vicious light within.

Hawke tries. She tries very hard, but there is only so much you can do for someone who does not want to be saved.

He talks to himself and tells himself that he is talking to Justice, but it’s hard to tell anymore. Sometimes he looks in the mirror and can see the cracks between gaunt skin stretched over weak bones. He hates himself, but self-flagellation is too close to blood magic, so he only bleeds when he follows Hawke. He does his best to follow her often, and heals himself last, in the hope that his mana will have run out and he’ll be too exhausted. Merrill calls him noble, and Sebastian sees his gaping wounds and exhausted face and looks envious of the power Anders has over his own punishment. 

 

 


	10. Pillow Fight

 

 

 

“It’s been so long,” says Isabela. “I thought perhaps I made it up.” She steps closer to Fenris’ bed, and picks up one of the dozens of cushions. It’s soft, the edges tasselled. She tosses it onto the pile and strokes a silky blue one.

Fenris folds his arms and watches her.

“Are you done?” he growls.

“Oh, I’m not judging you,” she says. “I’m just surprised.”

“You thought I’d sleep on a stone floor with a dirty bundle for a pillow.”

“Well, almost. I didn’t picture a pillow at all.” It had taken some effort on his part to coax her here, and now he knows the reason he rolls his eyes at her imagination. “There’s so many cushions!” she adds, and jumps onto the bed with a squeak and a giggle.

“Are you five years old?” he sighs.

“Get up here!” she demands, and snatches his hand and makes him jump up and down on the mattress with her. He complains, and then she falls and lets him fall on top of her bouncing a little, and she is warm and close and smells of salt and open seas.

He does not mind. This, this is something good, something he wants. It’s something he’s taken for himself, and something he wants to keep.

 

 

 


	11. Assassin and Pirate

 

 

 

Fenris is not with them when they go up the mountain and find an elf who, as Isabela would say, is not really an elf. Not in his heart, where it counts. When the fight is done and Zevran turns to see Isabela he laughs.

“My dear, I thought I recognised those,” he gives the proper pause, “daggers. It’s been too long.”

“Much too long,” she agrees, eyeing him up and down. He’s still bearing his legs nearly entirely, and it's still a good look for him.

“If we are done here,” he begins. She cuts him off, not even allowing him to complete the offer.

“Yes, please.”

Hawke touches her shoulder.

“What about Fenris?”

Isabela’s face flickers, just a moment, and then she shakes it away with a careless toss of her head. “What about him?” Hawke frowns, and watches the two of them walk away together, Isabela’s hip knocking against Zevran.

“Who’s Fenris?” she hears Zevran ask.

“Oh, only the prettiest elf you’ll meet outside of a mirror. You should come to Kirkwall and meet him!”

“A city forged from slavery? I think not.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Sorry it took a while for him to appear, I started writing from this point but didn't want this to be a story that moves from A to B. I wanted meandering.)


	12. Tattooed and Elvish

Zevran does come to Kirkwall in the end. He wants to see what has kept Isabela away from the sea for so very long, and there he runs into Fenris in the bar.

“You’re very pretty,” he says instead of hello. Isabela is with Merrill, and Zevran is drinking and waiting for her. Fenris is doing the same, and slides his eyes over and frowns at the elf. It’s not the first time he’s been hit on and with his elvish blood keeping his face as it is for years to come it certainly won’t be the last.

“Thank you,” he says, “but I’m not interested.”

“You’re Fenris, am I right?” Fenris’ eyes flash dangerously, and Zevran finds himself stepping back, hands up, palms out. “I mean nothing by that, I accuse you of nothing. Mother of Mercy, what life have you lived?”

“This is Kirkwall,” spits Fenris, the only explanation he cares to give.

“Ah, I see. I am no assassin - that is to say, I am not here to kill you. I am Zevran Arainai.”

“You already know my name,” Fenris points out. “Might I ask how?”

“A mutual friend informed me you’d be the prettiest elf I see outside a mirror.” Zevran tilts his head on the side and looks him up and down. Fenris feels as though he’s being stripped naked and sized up. “She’s not wrong.” Fenris glares at him, waiting for an answer. “Isabela is the lovely woman I’m talking of.”

There’s something in his tone of voice that has Fenris understanding what sort of ‘mutual friend’ Zevran meant. He feels it like a lance to his stomach, and he busies himself a moment with his drink. Zevran notices, of course.

“I am sorry if I have stepped into something I should not have.”

“We are not exactly exclusive.” Fenris is cursing himself for his reaction. What he has with Isabela is exactly what he wanted, he’s simply not skilled in keeping his emotions separate from physical intimacies. It will come with time, he tells himself, and he steels his face and does not notice the pained expression Zevran makes.

“Oh? She told me she had been with no one else since you.” He flicks his eyes over at Fenris, trying to gauge the elf’s reaction. Fenris’ keeps his face carefully calm.

“Purely an matter of laziness on her part, I believe. Why hunt someone down when there’s me in a mansion?”

“You have a mansion?” Zevran’s surprise is obvious in his voice; elves rarely have houses, let alone mansions.

“Don’t get excited,” says a sultry voice. “He stole it, and it’s gross.”

“The bed’s fine,” retorts Fenris. “I didn’t know you demanded more of me.” This is easy, this banter, it’s like a dance he’s learnt all the steps to.

“But the table was rotted through. I still have the bruises.”

Zevran laughs, the sound loud and foreign at this time of day in the Hanged Man.

Fenris feels a little lost as he follows them to a table. They’re discussing Val Chevin or Val Royeaux, and he is aware of a great history between them, a history he has no part in. For the first time in a long time he feels uncertain around Isabela; he doesn’t know what she wants or how he fits into this.

They drink and they talk, and Isabela flirts with both elves, and Zevran flirts with both of them, while Fenris shifts uneasily in his seat. He leaves feeling no less settled than before. He goes to his mansion, alone, and wakes up, alone, and bathes and thinks about masturbating and decides against it, and thinks about reading but again decides not to. Donnic is on duty and Isabela is with Zevran, and Hawke would certainly want to discuss the frown on his face, so he languishes in the squalid mansion until it is time again to sleep.

Isabela has no knowledge of Fenris’ depressive state. She has missed her friend, and they have much to talk about. They discuss politics and they discuss men and women and elves and humans. They talk about murders and they talk about sordid trysts in alleyways.

It is only natural, in her mind, that Zevran join them when they next meet for cards and drinks.

“You’re not Fenris.”

Zevran freezes in the hallway outside of Isabela’s room, then smiles smoothly at the dwarf.

“No, though would not be the first around here to make that mistake. Handsome and elvish and tattooed is apparently all it takes in these parts.”

“Humans don’t like distinguishing between anyone they have to look down on,” Varric agrees. “I take it you’re the assassin Hawke picked up. Does Fenris know you’re here?”

“We’ve met,” says Zevran carefully. Isabela has assured him that it’s alright, they’re not exclusive, it’s just sex, but Zevran knows how easily sex can become muddled with everything else.

“But does he know?” asks Varric. “He’s not used to having anything.” They’ve sat down at Varric’s table, and Varric is leaning back in his chair. “Has Isabela told you about him?”

“Not in so many words,” he says. They’ve not caught up to her life in Kirkwall, except in bits and pieces mostly centred on Hawke. He wants to meet this woman; he wants to know what kind of glorious person has achieved all that she has.

“Then I suggest you tread carefully. He does this magical fisting thing, and not the fun kind.”

“I,” Zevran purses his lips, trying to guess at what Varric means. “I will tread carefully.”

“Good. Do you cheat at cards?”

“Of course. What do you take me for?"

“Excellent,” says Varric, reaching for a pack.

The others arrive in bits and pieces, Isabela leaving her room to find Hawke leaning against the opposite wall and glaring at her.

“Wha-?” asks Isabela, as a hand curls around her arm and drags her back into her room. She’s about to make a flirtatious remark but Hawke’s glare stops her. “This is about Fenris,” she says, bowing her head.

“Maker knows you’ve made some crap decisions,” Hawke starts.

“I swear,” Isabela tries. Hawke cuts her off.

“If you hurt him I will hunt you down and gut you.”

“Andraste’s arse, Hawke, you don’t beat around the bush. Of course,” she adds with a wink, “if you did you and I would be doing something quite different right now.”

Hawke continues to glare.

“It’s just sex,” she says. She feels like she’s been repeating herself a lot lately, and is annoyed that everyone is trying to complicate her life.

“Isabela,” says Hawke. There’s a warning in her voice but Isabela doesn’t understand what it’s for. She’s only loved a few; these days most of her emotion is spent on herself or the sea. It’s safer that way, but she’s let herself down too often and the sea’s a distant, unforgiving lover. Fenris is solid and Zevran is familiar, and Isabela is a pirate to the core. She wants and she has takes and she has, and she owes loyalty to none.

Hawke reluctantly releases her. Isabela walks with square shoulders and a sultry stride to a table where three elves look up at her, and only one is smiling.

“Oh, look, Isabela, I think I have a good hand!” says Merrill. Fenris’ face flickers in that way it does whenever either mage reminds him of their existence, but then they eyes are back at her. Zevran is down the table next to Varric, and he nods to her and returns to talking with Varric.

Zevran is easy. He understands her. Fenris… She looks at him. Fenris is a complication.

A complication that later that night pushes her against the wall outside her room, his hands finding their place against her arse, his body solid and his cock obvious and hard.

“Hawke,” she manages to gasp as fingers shift against the soft inside of her thigh, “is worried. Because - ohh, again,” she sighs, and Fenris grinds against her firmly, “Zevran.”

“I don’t much care about him right now,” growls Fenris, right into her ear, so that she whines against him - Isabela is never ashamed of what touches can do to her, never holds back on how loud she is no matter where she is, and Maker knows the Hanged Man is used to seeing her in similar positions, “so long as I can keep doing this.”

He picks her up, two hands gripping her thighs around him, and they fall into her room with heated eagerness, and tear each other’s clothes away.

 

“Hawke seems to think you have feelings for me.”

“No, she doesn’t,” says Fenris. He’s looking around for his clothes, and Isabela isn’t helping him because he’s simply so lovely to watch as he prowls naked around the room. “She thinks that this could get complicated.”

“She doesn’t get that it’s just sex.” She watches him, and he’s not looking at her as he adjusts his pants and fixes them around his feet. “You understand that, don’t you?”

“Hawke doesn’t understand this,” he straightens and gestures between them. “She only knows sex from stories.”

“Where it always means love, I know. Maker,” she rolls onto her stomach and watches him tug on a shirt. “I hate talking about this sort of thing.”

“Talk is healthy, or so Sebastian would have me believe.”

“I don’t want him involved in this.”

“Yes, you would,” he says in that simple, abrupt manner of his, and Isabela giggles, and it’s nice. It’s nice because she’s relaxed all the way through to her bones, and Fenris is handsome, and she’s not on the sea but that’s the only way life could get better right now. “I think that he would not.”

“But you would?”

Fenris hesitates. “He is handsome,” he says slowly, but Sebastian is also his friend, and Sebastian is a world of problems that Fenris doesn’t want to touch, at least not so intimately.

“And if he were willing,” Isabela is sitting up, air cold on her bare breasts. “You would be?”

“Perhaps not him,” says Fenris. He says it in a way that implies that not him, but definitely someone else.

Isabela never thinks before she speaks, so she blurts the question out. “Zevran?”

Fenris blinks, and turns slowly to regard her. “That’s what you want?”

“Yes.”

Fenris looks away, but the reaction doesn’t bother Isabela. She’s comfortable with the world knowing what she wants, and Fenris likes knowing what his options are.

“I’ll think about it,” he says, and Isabela’s breath catches. She didn’t expect that response said so easily.

“Think fast, Zevran’s likely to move on soon,” she warns. He makes a solemn rumbling noise in his throat and does not kiss her goodbye. She falls back onto her bed and smiles at the roof. She never thought she’d be so lucky as to get that answer out of him. She quickly rolls up and pulls on her clothes. She needs to find Zevran, and she needs to talk him into encouraging Fenris. She know it won’t take more than asking him.


	13. Top or Bottom?

“Top or bottom?”

“Excuse me?” asks Anders.

“Top, or bottom?” repeats Isabela more carefully.

“I heard you, just, why are you asking?”

Isabela shrugs. “I’m curious. And Hawke is taking forever."

“Take your curiosity to someone else,” snaps Anders. They’re in Hawke’s front room, waiting to leave. Sebastian is standing with them, waiting for Hawke to return a tome he lent her.

“Sebastian!” says Isabela.

“No,” says Sebastian. He doesn’t even look at her. Isabela makes a soft whining noise in her throat.

“Oh, come on, you can play.”

“Play what?” asks Merrill as she bounces through the door.

“What are you doing here?”

“I made cakes.” She holds up a little bundle. “I thought you’d like to take them up the mountain. That is today, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes, please,” says Isabela. She goes to take one and Merrill slaps her hand away.

“Not now. Up the mountain. What are we playing?”

“I'm asking them top or bottom, but they aren't joining in."

“Is this a sex question?” Isabela nods. “Uh… Top. I think. Mostly? Can someone be half and half?”

“Of course they can, Kitten. A top, hey?” Isabela eyes the elf up and down. Merrill feels stripped naked under the gaze, and fidgets a bit. “I can see that.”

“Careful,” says Zevran. “I think you’re developing a type.”

“Lies and slander!” says Isabela. “You don’t top.”

“Well, no, but I imagine he is,” he tilts his head at the other elf of the group. Fenris shifts from foot to foot, curling his toes on the thick rug and tensing his calf muscles. Zevran hasn’t seen him stand still for more than three minutes.

“Oh, fine. I like tattoos,” sighs Isabela.

“And elves. And pushy people.”

“I like people to hold their own,” Isabela corrects sternly. “What about it, Anders?”

Anders gives a laborious sigh, casting his eyes up the stairs in the hopes that Hawke will come and rescue him. “Bottom,” he says. “I don’t know why you’re asking,” he adds in a snappish tone. “You already know.”

“I just wanted to hear you say it.

“Topping is so…” Anders doesn’t finish the sentence, but Isabela’s already satisfied.

“Sebastian?”

“This is improper,” Sebastian says.

“Just because you’re not doing it now doesn’t mean you haven’t. Come on, spill the beans.” Sebastian doesn’t look at Fenris. He very carefully keeps his gaze on a painting on the wall.

“I… Not that this is something I do anymore. But I, uh, ‘bottom’.” You can hear the quotes as Sebastian tries desperately to keep distance between who he was and who he is. Isabela bites her lip and smiles.

“Oh, but I bet you’re a pushy bottom.”

Sebastian presses his lips together. “Some have said that,” he allows.

“I do wish I had met you before,” sighs Isabela. “You’d have been so much fun.”

“Yes, I am so disappointed to hold the honour of having had sex with absolutely no one in this room,” says Sebastian dryly. There’s a jolt, and everyone stares.

“Seb, was that… Was that sarcasm?”

“I’m capable of many things, I think you’ll find.”

“But none of them what I’m interested in,” says Isabela.

“I haven’t had sex with anyone in this room,” says Merrill.

“And technically, neither have I,” adds Anders. Isabela frowns at the ceiling, thinking.

“No, I don’t think we have. Technically. Sparklefingers."

Fenris has started to prowl the room, a cat caged. The others pay it no mind, they’re used to his habits, but Zevran watches him carefully. Fenris is unhappy with the conversation, that much is clear, but Zevran wonders if it’s disgust at how free some of his companions seem to be - or used to be - with physical intimacies, or if it’s jealousy that he cannot seem to manage the same.

“Hello, hello, sorry,” says Hawke, skipping down the stairs and ending their conversation. “Sebastian, your book’s in the next room. Merrill, why are you here? Are you coming with us?”

“No, I’m having lunch with a friend.” She glares preemptively at them. “I do have friends.”

“Never said you didn’t, Kitten,” says Isabela. “Look, Hawke, she brought cake!”


	14. Star Gazing

They go up the mountain: Hawke, Isabela, Fenris, Zevran, Anders. Two warriors, two rogues and a mage. Anders trails behind while Hawke walks ahead with Isabela, or, rather, Isabela drags Hawke on ahead to look at flowers, and oh, you can see the sea, how lovely! She looks over her shoulder at the two elves, not noticing Anders walking behind, muttering to himself a little. (The man thinks he’s talking inside of his head, and doesn’t realise his lips are moving. He doesn’t realise a lot of things anymore, he’s lost in his plans for the world.)

Fenris keeps a hesitate pace in time with Zevran, not talking. His conversation with Isabela was two nights before, and he knows Zevran knows. Too many times he turns around and Zevran is right there, heat of his body rolling off him in waves. There’s too many lingering looks through lowered eyelashes, too many and too much, and it excites him to know he could just stop right now, right this second, and push Zevran against the rocks and have him. (A little part of him is thrilled because Anders would be disgusted, but only a very small part of him. He has spent too long obeying others to build his actions on what the Abomination thinks.)

 

They fight a few bandits and Zevran is there at his back, and though the fight is easy it’s nice to have him there. Any fight can be fatal, or at least inconvenient - nothing like Anders bending over him with a sneer, Hawke the frowning mediator. They do get along now, sort of. They pass each other things to set up camp, Fenris helps with Anders’ tent, Anders helps him with the fire. Zevran keeps out of the way in this process, because this little ragged family have their own rhythms and he is a visitor in their midst.

That night Isabela lies on her back between Hawke and Fenris, Anders on the end of the and Zevran the other side of Fenris, all of them in a half-circle around the fire with the smoke blowing beyond.

“There,” says Isabela, pointing at a star. “If you follow that from Kirkwall you’ll be at Brandel’s Reach in no time. Then,” she leans over Hawke, points at another, “see how that lines with that one? It’s a little different further east, of course, but they’ll help you round the cape to Alamar.” Fenris knows all these; Isabela has already taught him on a night a few weeks before down Wounded Coast. Zevran’s travelled far and wide and sometimes he’s used the stars to help him. So Isabela focuses on her lesson on Hawke and Anders, both who listen and offer what they know about the stories in the stars.

Zevran shifts a little closer to Fenris, not so close that they are touching through their blankets, but enough that their blankets are touching and Fenris can feel that pressure.

“It’s a good thing it is a warm night, no?” asks Zevran. His voice is soft. “Else we’d be in tents, and who knows how that would work? Two to a tent, but who with whom? There are five of us; three would have to go together.”

Or one could be left to their own tent, Fenris thinks, but he says nothing. Zevran looks at the stars without listening to Isabela. Fenris’ breathing is soft and steady beside him, and when he speaks the sound curls all the way through Zevran. He has been many places and heard many things, but nothing matches up with this voice.

“I’m not saying no. But I’m not saying yes.”

“You like time to make choices, I understand. Though, I must say,” he adds, “you’re quite different in battle.”

“That’s a different matter,” says Fenris. “Fights are,” he doesn’t know how to explain it. In a fight he knows how to stand and how to react. He must survive. His friends must survive. The choices are simple.

“Easy?” scoffs Zevran. “You’re a better fighter than me, yet I’d wager I’ve had more practice than you. I am older, at least.”

“I’m full elf, so who knows.”

There’s something in his tone that isn’t completely serious, and has Zevran asking, “do you know?”

Fenris tilts his head to the side, almost catching Zevran’s gaze. “I’m younger than you, but only by a few years.” There’s a pause, and a cloud wanders in front of the moon. “Isabela says you are leaving.”

“I always leave,” Zevran states. “Like Isabela. There is too much world to see, too much gold to steal and too many beds to warm.”

“She’s been here for long enough.”

“Give her a ship and she’ll be gone.” Fenris is silent, but it’s nothing he did not know before. Then, absurdly, Zevran says, “perhaps one day I’ll see you out there, one hand in the rigging, swinging your big sword and felling a slaver in a single sweep.”

The words cut Fenris in a place he didn’t know he had. “I don’t know how much of what you say is honest and how much innuendo,” he manages.

“I like to think I mix the two together.”

“I am not certain I would make a good sailor,” Fenris speaks slowly, stumbling over the words, “even if Isabela wanted me.”

“There’s a difference between being a pirate and being a sailor,” says Zevran in a voice that implies Fenris should already know what that difference is. “And Isabela would not say no to you.”

“I’m not so certain as you seem to be, but perhaps you know her better,” Fenris allows. Zevran doesn’t believe him, he thinks perhaps that Isabela is just not so simple as she likes to think she is. “Have you sailed with her?”

“Oh, I have sailed her,” chuckles Zevran. Fenris makes a disapproving grunt, but it’s almost a laugh and Zevran will take what he can get. “Has she told you how we met?” When Fenris shakes his head, Zevran says, “Then I will not: it is not my story to tell. But in those days she was Queen of the Eastern-Seas, or so she said. In either case everyone knew her name, and many feared her. I helped her sometimes, though I am not so sure footed on a deck as I am on land.”

“You are similar to her, though,” Fenris hazards.

“Different sides of the same coin. We kill, we fuck, we steal, we see the world. A different sunset everyday, that’s the life for me.”

“And a different bed?”

“Most often,” Zevran laughs. “But not always. There is some comfort in consistency - you know what I am saying, don’t you?”

“I do,” murmurs Fenris.

They lie there in silence a bit, Isabela’s voice dropping into sleep and leaving Hawke and Anders talking softly. The fire is low and the stars are bright, and Fenris has an urge. A stupid urge, something that he would not usually react on.

He does it anyway.

He rolls and leans over Zevran, and the elf’s eyes start from the stars to his eyes, and Fenris blinks at him, just once, before kissing him. It’s a hard kiss, the only way Fenris knows how to. He puts all of himself in it, immediately devours Zevran, and Zevran surges up and catches his hands in Fenris’ hair, breathing hard through his nose trying to keep their mouths together. He expects Fenris to break away suddenly, but he doesn’t, and it seems an age before there’s space between their mouths again.

“What was that for?” asks Zevran, astonished.

“I wanted to,” says Fenris, and suddenly it’s as simple as that: he wants, he can take, he can have. He is allowed.

 

The next morning Zevran wakes and touches his lips, and wonders if that truly happened or if it was a sleep-muddled dream. Beside him Fenris is up and rolling his blankets together. The air is already warm, and when he looks down at Zevran there’s a coy look on his face. Zevran drops his hand from his lips and smiles.

“It seems to be a good morning.”

“Warm,” grunts Fenris.

“I meant more my immediate view, but if this weather keeps you sweating and flushed I won't complain."

“Something to fuel your fantasies,” mutters Fenris, but he needn't lean so close to tuck in the last corner of his bedroll, and he glances at Zevran through his eyelashes in a manner that is beyond alluring. Zevran feels it like a jolt of electricity through his body. He keeps it together, though, peeling himself out of his blankets and hauling himself upright, feeling the eyes of both Isabela and Fenris on him. He unknots his hair with his fingers and laces his boots. There's sweat prickling at his skin already, but he knows it’s going to be a good day. 


	15. Crass is... Brass?

They’re at Hawke’s house. They don’t do this often, except that while up the mountain someone (Hawke) found someone else (Anders) in a state of undress and all they could do was gasp at how skinny they are. This was met by Isabela mentioning the same about Fenris, and seeing as each only seemed to eat at the Hanged Man Hawke decided that a proper meal cooked by Orana was in order. She seats her friends around a heavy table, Fenris by her right side and Varric on the other, then Sebastian by Fenris and Anders by Sebastian. Zevran is between Varric and Isabela, and arrayed around the other end of the table is Donnic and Aveline and Merrill, with Merrill and Isabela bending their heads together and giggling about things the others don’t understand.

They are seats meant to be occupied by her family, her brother teasing his sister, one or both of them with a partner touching their hand and whispering into their ear. Her mother should be here, even - and this is a thought Hawke tries not to have - even her father should be here. Instead, she has a dwarf and three elves and two apostates and a city guard and too many ex-slaves… They’re not replacements for the family she had, they’re just a different family, filling up different gaps.

Fenris clears his plate and Hawke frowns at him and fills it again.

“I don’t need all this food,” he tries to insist.

“Sure you do,” says Sebastian. “You got back from the mountain today and immediately came to help me in the garden. You need the energy.”

“Oh, Fen, you didn’t tell me you’d be with him,” whines Isabela. The others start; they know about Fenris and Isabela - they’re hardly secretive - but they haven’t heard her shorten his name so casually before. Only Hawke has that privilege. They hold their breath, but Fenris responds easily.

“You were with Zevran,” he explains, “so I found something else to fill my time.” He accepts more potato onto his plate. Hakwe gives Anders a meaningful look, and under duress he picks up his fork again and takes a tiny bite of the food in front of him. He isn’t sure how he eats anymore. He thinks that it’s all Justice taking hold of his hands and his jaw and forcing food down his gullet to keep his body functioning. He certainly has no appetite anymore.

“Did you buy that hat we found?” asks Merrill. “I found some feathers that would look good on it.”

“Feathers that Anders doesn’t have?” supplies Donnic. He grins, thinking himself to be a great comic genius. Merrill laughs, and the sound is pretty enough to satisfy the guardsman.

“A feathered hat,” muses Isabela. “I fear the sea would ruin it.”

“Oh, but it would look so fine until it did,” says Merrill. “Anyway, you don’t sail anymore.” There’s a stiff silence, and Isabela swallows.

“No, Kitten, not anymore.”

“You’d suit the hat, Fenris,” says Zevran to break the silence. “It’s a fine one.”

“I think not.” Fenris looks at Zevran through his eyelashes. It’s been like this since they came back down the mountain the day before: remarks that are laced with something else, but Zevran can make anything an invitation to his bed.

“It would muss up his hair,” Hawke agrees, then narrows her eyes. She’s caught hold of whatever is going on, and she doesn’t like it. “Are you trying to take him away from me?”

“You can come with us, if you like.”

“With us?” asks Fenris uncertainly. “Where are we going?”

“Anywhere,” says Isabela. “Everywhere.” Some nights she dreams of the sea; this morning she woke up almost tasting the sea on her lips.

“Your bedroom, I hope,” leers Zevran.

“Maker’s breath,” Aveline cuts in. “Must you all be so crass?”

“I’m not crass,” says Anders.

“I don’t know what crass is,” adds Merrill. “It sounds like a type of metal. Is it?”

“No, Kitten,” says Isabela. “It’s what I am.”

“Oh. A pirate?”

Isabela smiles and shrugs. “Close enough.”

“Hawke’s not crass,” continues Merrill. Isabela sneers, but it’s a kind sneer.

“Hawke wouldn’t know crass if it hit her in the face.”

“Hey!” Hawke cries. “I resent that. I’ve been hit in the face plenty of times. And I’m not the one who took a vow of chastity.” Everyone looks at Sebastian, who shakes his head.

“Oh, no, don’t you go dragging me into this.”

“There’s a difference though,” says Fenris. “You don’t want; he does, and denies.” Sebastian is blushing a little, knowing what Fenris is referring to: too often Sebastian’s eyes have lingered on his friend’s body, too easily he’s startled by warm flesh close to his, he notices too much and is too obvious about it.

“You really don’t want?” asks Zevran. “Not at all?” Hawke nods comfortably; she doesn’t talk about this sort of thing often but she does not mind to do so. “What’s that like?”

“I’m guaranteed a full night’s sleep. Unlike some people.” Isabela thinks the comment is directed at her and is about to retort something, but Aveline is blushing and looking away, and she remembers a few weeks ago when Aveline dozed off during a game of Wicked Grace.

“Is Fenris crass?” Merrill interrupts.

“I don’t need to know,” insists Anders. Sebastian is focusing very carefully at his plate.

“If crass means pirate…” Isabela studies Fenris, who is looking back, waiting for her judgement. It means a lot to him, they both realise that, her good opinion is important to him, and her voice catches in her throat. This thing between them is not meant to be as important as all that.

“Fenris is very crass,” says Zevran. “Or at least, with a mouth like that I hope he is.”

 

Hawke comes up to Zevran later that night, while the others settle in the next room to drink and talk. "Stop it," she says. "You're making him uncomfortable."

“He’s not incapable of telling me to stop himself,” he reminds her, but he nods his assent.

She thinks she's done well, but then she notices Fenris giving Zevran strange looks over that evening, Zevran who sits there placidly and deals out cards, Zevran who is nothing except polite. It's disconcerting, Hawke agrees, and when Fenris notices her noticing she does her best to act innocent; at least, to act as though she's done right.

"What did you say?" asks Fenris, leaning close to her where she’s pinned between him and Aveline on the couch. "He's been... strange."

"I merely asked him to back off." He blinks at her, and she realises the problem. "You were enjoying it."

"I have become used to such remarks." He glances at Isabela, and Hawke follows the gaze. "I would beg you not to get involved in my affairs, but there would be no point to that, would there?"

"None whatsoever," she grins and slings an arm over his shoulder. "You are my favourite in this whole city, you do know that, don't you?"

“I am fully aware,” he drawls.

“What are you playing at?”

“I’m not sure I know the steps to this dance, but I want to learn.” She regards him seriously. Finally, she nods.

“Be it on your own head.”

“Hopefully not. I don’t think I have the balance.”

Hawke makes a strangled noise, and then bursts out laughing. “She’s rubbing off on you,” she groans.

“Funny,” says Fenris. “I thought that was the point.”


	16. One Night

Fenris takes them both home. He doesn’t plan it, he just leaves Hawke and walks out and turns at his door to see Isabela and Zevran both there. Isabela shuts the door and Zevran crowds against him, hips on hips and pushing him into the wall. There’s a moment, a single pause in action, as they look at each other. Zevran asks, Fenris says yes.

It’s the only part of the evening that’s slow.

From there it’s Fenris being pushed into the hard brick of the wall and hands pulling at his hair. It’s lips across his skin and teeth digging in, dragging at his clothes, and he attacks back. They find their way to his bed and all the cushions are swept off, no place for softness in this thing of theirs.

Isabela is familiar to him and Zevran is not, but he’s greedy for both of them. They buck and slide together, loud and dizzying and everything that Fenris ever knew is swept aside for this, these two people here with him, these sensations of ecstasy.

He wakes sore and scratched, with bruises from his jaw to his navel and hand prints over his hips and waist. He hopes the others have marks like these to carry with them. He rolls out of the empty bed with a satisfied groan, not at all disappointed to find that the others have left. Isabela never stays the night; he did not expect Zevran to, either. He looks at himself in the old mirror and for the first time since he can remember he does not hate what he sees. He sees someone who is wanted, someone who wants, someone who makes choices.

He is proud of himself, he thinks. He hums a tuneless song as he washes, not glad to have the scent of the night gone from his body but willing so long as the bruises still flourish. He wants the others to notice, he wants everyone to notice. He feels giddy, and he walks with a bright hitch to his step to take breakfast with Hawke.

It’s his custom, and she’s waiting for him. She noticed Isabela and Zevran leaving with him, and is ready with disapproval on her lips. All that dies when she sees what a good mood Fenris is in.

Hawke’s glad to see him happy, and when they go downstairs and find that Zevran has left the Hanged Man - left the city entirely - it’s all she can do to not explode.

“Gone where?” asks Hawke. She’s angry, her voice too loud for the small room. Isabela shrugs. It’s what Zevran does, and she doesn’t see any cause for alarm. He’ll appear again, and in the strangest of places.

“He said he was leaving,” says Fenris. His jaw is stiff, his shoulders suddenly square as though bracing against a storm. He jerks his lips into a pretence of a smile. “It is no matter.”

It does, though, it matters a great deal, and he suddenly knows what Sebastian feels, wanting something and knowing he cannot have it. He’s subdued that night when Isabela comes to his house, and for the first time she lingers after sex. They do not speak, they only share a bottle of wine and watch the fire. The change in Fenris’ mood bothers her, and it bothers her more because she suspects that it’s not Zevran that’s bothering Fenris - or, at least, not just Zevran.

The idea of asking bothers her because she’s afraid of what answer she might get. She avoids the question by telling herself she’ll talk to Fenris if his smile is still slow and stale in a week or two, but in a week or two the city is on fire and she doesn’t get the chance.

 


	17. Before I Die

Fenris swings his sword down, cleaving the man in two. He feels electricity through the air - the blood mage, somewhere off to the side, and he grits his teeth and suffers the pain of magic too close to his lyrium tattoos. His leg is aching, but he does not have the time to check how much skin is still attached to bone. He spins and swings and cuts and kills, and when that group are dead he pushes on through. There’s a sound of metal beside him and he turns - _too slow, Fenris, too slow_ \- he sees the sword moving and in horror he knows he cannot block it, cannot dodge it.

He is tired, tired to the bone.

For a moment he aches to feel the blade rip his head from his body.

An arrow sticks the man in the neck and he drops with a rattling clump.

Fenris blinks dumbly at Sebastian, who is stalking towards him, his eyes fierce.

“I thought you left us,” growls Fenris, and anything else he thought to say is snatched up by Sebastian’s mouth. The man’s cheek is rough with stubble, his lips salty and rusted from blood and sweat, and he is heavy and demanding against Fenris' mouth. Fenris sags under the force of the kiss, not knowing how to react, not sure he’s meant to.

He expects Sebastian to apologise, either to Fenris or to himself, but the man just steps back and doesn’t quite meet Fenris’ eye, and then they are being attacked again and Fenris thinks that probably they’ll die here and he’ll never get the chance to find out.


	18. Through Fog and Fire

Merrill is walking through a fog. Fog does not smell like this, but her mind doesn’t register that fact. Her mood is damp and the world is ashen, and so this mist is fog and the cracks are stones, and it is early morning in her people’s camp. She has woken from a bad dream. That’s what it was. A bad, bad dream, and the Keeper will find her and soothe her through it.

She trips on something, stumbles, and sees a familiar face. She blinks at it.

Isabela.

She knows the name, knows the face, but there are no brown eyes looking at her. There is a lot of blood. She kneels, and touches the woman’s face. The skin is soft, and moves easily under her fingers.

“Isabela?” she asks. She’s uncertain that the name matches this face, but when lips move she says it again. “Isabela. Wake up.”

The woman groans and her eyelashes flutter before she looks up at Merrill.

“Can you move?” she asks. She knows no healing magic; if Isabela is injured she cannot help. Isabela moves a fist, and then an arm, and then Merrill is struggling to help her up.

“I think the blood is not my own,” Isabela says, looking down at her stained shirt. “Where is that…” She cannot finish the statement, all bite going from her voice. “Where is Hawke?” she asks instead.

“I don’t know.”

They walk through the smoke, tripping over bodies. Both of them are slow and know they need to be faster in case something strikes at them, but they cannot manage to gather the energy.

They find Fenris next. He’s panting and his hair is brown and red and mattered. He doesn’t see them, his sword cutting through a templar as though the man’s armour is nothing more than cotton. He nearly strikes them, then meets Isabela’s weary gaze and drops his sword. He wants to kiss her, or to touch her, to assure himself that she’s real. The urge is foolish, something that isn’t to be in a relationship like theirs, and he resists it.

“Do you have lyrium?” he says to Merrill. She blinks at him, lost in the sight of dead men and blood dripping down Fenris’ arm, wet to the elbow. “Lyrium!” he growls, jolting her. She hands him what little she has left, and they follow him.

Hawke is broken and bleeding and dying.

Anders is beside her. He’s slumped, back bent and hair falling around his face.

“Why is he allowed to live?”

“He is saving Hawke,” says Fenris. He sounds tired, unable to argue. He presses the lyrium into Anders’ hand, and the mage blinks at it a moment before realising what it is and drinking it down. Fenris does not kneel, instead gripping his sword firmly and standing watch. There’s a shuck and thwack from somewhere in the smoke. Merrill jumps.

“Varric,” supplies Fenris.

“Where is Sebastian?” asks Merrill. It’s the wrong thing to ask. Fenris looks at her bleakly, and shakes his head. Merrill does not ask again.


	19. Nautical Term

 

 

 

Isabela steals them a ship.

Commandeers, she says, because it’s a strategic retreat that they are making and the city owes them at least this much in payment for all they’ve done. When they say goodbye to Aveline the woman does not complain that they have city property.

They take what they can carry and what the rest of the city has not plundered from Hawke’s house, and Fenris takes the last bottles of wine from his cellar and a pillow from his bed, and at the last moment he sees a book tucked in amongst the rest, one that Sebastian gave him to learn. The cover is worn and there is a hand-written note on the front page that Fenris took a while figuring out.

 _My dearest Sebastian_ , it says. _Happy birthday. Love, Mother._

He tucks the book under an arm and leaves the last dry land he stands on for two months. 

 

 

 


	20. An Orange Hat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anders is going to be a bit suicidal for the next couple chapters. Sorry. But it's only a few lines and it will pass.

They’re a fractured family avoiding each other’s shadows in the cramped confines of the stolen ship. It still carries Kirkwall colours; Isabela keeps seeing them and intending to call one of her sailors to bring them down, but it keeps slipping her mind.

Aveline refuses to join them, for reasons of duty and honour she could not run from Kirwall, and with Hawke unconscious there is no one to talk her out of running with them. Varric, too, they leave on the dock. “Dwarves don’t do well on ships,” he says, and watches them sail on the midnight tide. There are no tears, if not then than definitely not over a bottle of whiskey in a shattered room above the Hanged Man.

Anders’ face is bleak and he still has the blood from the battle on him, even three days later. He tries to kill himself on the fourth day, and Merrill is asked to keep an eye on him. It’s too big a question to ask her, and Anders keeps himself safe out of guilt for what Merrill will feel if she fails on her watch.

Fenris refuses to leave Hawke’s side. The woman wakes in fits and starts, and then slinks back into a comatose state. Anders is well aware that he is only being kept to keep the woman alive, and the way that Fenris looks at him he knows that should she die he’ll be flung overboard.

Merrill feels herself disgraced, useless for her blood magic, a runaway from her clan, childish and tiny. She watches Anders, and does not think she is too different from him, not really.

It's Isabela who gets tired of this before all the others. She’s fastest to rebound from a bad situation, though Maker knows the others have had enough experience that they should be better at it by now, she thinks.

She finds a hat in her cabin, and seeing her reflection in the dim reflection of a salt-covered piece of glass makes her smile. The effort hurts her cheeks, but it cracks the solemn sadness within her and she goes to find Merrill.

“Merrill!” It’s dark, and the rag-tag crew grumble awake as she yells too loud for the time of night. “How about this one?” There’s a small lamp burning where the Abomination is tied, and Merrill sleeps beside him but wakes in a jolt at Isabela’s voice.

“What?” she mutters, wiping sleep from her eyes.

“What about this one?” Isabela strikes a pose, and Merrill stares at her. She bursts out laughing, rolling into herself and holding her stomach as her cries ring through the cabin. Anders grumbles awake and doesn’t understand how anything is funny, not even Isabela with bright orange feathers falling into her face.

“Bel- Bela. That’s the worst one. It should walk the plank,” she gasps.

“Aw, I thought it looked rather fetching. Perhaps I’ll give it to Fenris.”

“Oh, please do,” says Merrill. “I would love to see his face.”


	21. Habits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Continued warning for suicidal Anders.

The next day, just as the first hint of sun brushes the waves, Hawke wakes up, and the mood of the ship changes again.

Anders is beside her when she opens her eyes, and when she blinks her golden eyes at him the first feeling that strikes him is relief, and following close behind is fear. He’s no longer useful. No longer wanted. His purpose here is done.

She croaks a little, her mouth dry and needing water. There’s a pitcher by the bed, but Anders wakes Fenris with a nudge of his hand and doesn’t stay to see delight settle over the elf’s face. He walks onto the deck, and no one follows him.

The air is cold and fresh, salty with the hint of wood and canvas behind. The yards creak in the wind, rigging slapping against the wood. He closes his eyes and breathes in. The sensation does nothing for him. He does not feel alive. He feels like a dead thing pretending it knows how to walk.

“Anders,” says Isabela. “You’re up early.”

The wind rips at the sails. “Hawke is awake.”

It’s enough to get the deck to himself as the sun pulls itself free of the horizon into tumultuous weather. He stands at the stern all alone, and looks down at the water. The shore is a fuzzy haze in the distance, or perhaps it’s only clouds. He can never tell.

“Morning,” says a tired, sweet voice.

“Hawke is awake,” he repeats, and Merrill’s feet race across the deck.

He considers stepping off the edge. He can swim, but it is a very long way to what might not be shore, and he has not eaten in several days. The weather is poor, the visibility low. The weight of his robes will pull his exhausted body under the waves, and then he will no longer be a problem to be solved. He can feel Justice - Vengeance - stirring within him. The spirit would not be pleased to find itself within a dead body, but Anders doesn’t care about that. He doesn’t care about much anymore.

He doesn’t notice the footsteps on the deck until there is a person beside him. White-lined hands are placed on the wood, next to where his are resting. Anders looks steadily out to sea.

“She’s asking for you.”

“Really?” asks Anders. “Why? Why would she want me?” He refuses to let himself break into a sob, not in front of this- this man, this elf who hates him. He digs his nails into the wood and squeezes his eyes shut. “Why would she want me?” he repeats.

Fenris lets the sails whip in the wind a moment before he answers. He forces the words out simply, as though they do not bother him. “She loves you.”

“Not like she loves you,” Anders says with a harsh laugh. He wonders why the elf doesn’t push him over the edge of the ship. It’s what he’s always wanted, to rid the world of all mages.

There’s a hand suddenly over his. The lyrium sends shivers through him, and he finds himself wanting to crowd against Fenris and race his tongue along the lines. He swallows. He wants the drug that is knitted into his skin. What surer way to kill himself than force Fenris into doing it for him?

“She’s asking for you,” says Fenris, “and I am not in the habit of refusing what she wants.” The hand curls under Anders’ palm and grips him, tugging him away from the stern, away from the water, away from whatever choice he was about to make.

Hawke feels as though her head is full of bees.

She lets Isabela tip water into her mouth. The motion of swallowing is still difficult, and her arms feel too slow and too weak to hold a mug to her lips. The door creaks open and Fenris is there. He looks strange, leading the mage by the hand, but that image is taken over by how Anders looks.

He looks as though he has not washed since Kirkwall. He looks like a thin sheet of paper drenched in water, fragile, about to tear at any moment. She worries about Fenris touching him. She holds out a hand and Fenris places Anders’ in hers before hastily backing to the doorway. He does not want to be parted from Hawke but he does not want to be so close to Anders.

If not for him, none of this would have happened.

“I cannot apologise,” says Anders, the words themselves feeling like an apology.

Fenris wants him to. He wants to string him up by his guts, wind his entrails around his neck and wait to see if he dies first from blood loss or asphyxiation.

He looks away, out the porthole to the grey sky and sea beyond. It is only Hawke that stays his hand now, as she has so many times before.

“I know,” says Hawke. “I’m just glad,” her fingers tighten around Anders’ as much as they are able to - as much as she dares to. “You’re alive still.”

 

Anders eats with them, the first proper meal he has consumed in weeks. His jaw hurts to move, but Hawke is having the same problems so they are all eating soup. He cannot really taste it, but he is aware it is warm. It’s something. It’s a start, a small part of his mind tells him.

“Is there a plan?” asks Hawke. “I’d like there to be a plan.”

“There’s no plan,” says Isabela.

“Escape Kirkwall,” offers Fenris.

“Make sure he doesn’t kill himself,” adds Merrill, gesturing at Anders. Anders looks down at his plate. The remark is made to glibly for his liking, but it is not as though anyone’s moods are secret in this group.

“If we’re looking at life goals, I’d prefer a ship better than this one.” Isabela taps the wooden table. “No offence, my dear, but you’re not something I’d like to keep forever.”

Merrill looks shyly up at them all. “I’d like to find my clan. I - they probably have left Kirkwall. I would like to see what has happened to them.”

“Fenris?” Hawke prompts. Fenris starts. He hasn’t considered anything beyond Hawke.

“I am with you,” he says simply. Isabela makes no comment. She’s not touched Fenris, scarcely even brushing past him in the narrow confines of the ship. She still wants him, but the nature of that desire is something she is unfamiliar with. The rules are different somehow, but she isn’t sure what they’ve changed to.

“Anders?”

Anders has no plan. Anders planned to die. This life he has now, it’s strange and uncomfortable and unplanned. “With you,” he says. He says it because Fenris said it, and it’s easiest to copy the elf. It no longer grates him to do so. Nothing grates on him. His limbs could be shattered and severed and he’d not do so much as utter a whimper. He doesn’t notice the glare the elf is giving him.

“I don’t feel safe here,” says Hawke. “I can’t swim, for one.”

“They’ll be hunting me,” adds Anders. “Sebastian said he would hunt me.”

Merrill says nothing, because Anders is a problem she does not feel qualified to have an opinion on. Not anymore. They all look to Hawke, who can find nothing in her to say. Fenris hates the mage even more in this moment for bringing this to the forefront of his mind.

“Sebastian is dead,” he says. The words are sad and slow.

“You didn’t say,” gasps Isabela, automatically reaching out and taking Fenris’ hand. His skin is warm and rough, and familiar but it’s been so long that the touch is almost a new sensation. The elf doesn’t reach back, but he does not pull away. “How?”

Fenris shakes his head. He did not see the body, but no man would kiss like that without intending to die. It is a thought he does not wish to say, but Hawke looks steadily at him and he feels that she already knows it all.

“How are the others?” asks Hawke, shocked that she has not thought to ask before now. “Is Varric okay?”

“And Aveline,” Isabela nods. “They’re in Kirkwall.”

“So only a given amount of ‘okay’.” Hawke chews on her lip for a moment, then rubs her temple. She’s been awake for only a few hours but her whole body has been mashed into a grinder. “I’m going back to bed. No one die, or fall overboard.” Anders is grateful that she looks at all of them, not just him. “Arrite?”

Fenris tries to help her from the table but she slaps his hand. The red ribbon is still around his wrist, and he sits back down. 


	22. My Cabin?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, double-posted chapter 21, albeit with a couple edits. This is actual chapter 22 now. Thanks paulah for pointing it out to me!

The night after Hawke wakes up, Isabela sidles up to Fenris. He stands at the bow watching the water break over the stem. She knocks his hip against his.

“She’s alright, now.”

“Yes,” he mutters. It’s the fact that Hawke is alright that his mind is so heavy tonight.

“My cabin?”

He doesn’t answer, instead saying what’s on his mind. “I don’t know if I want to follow her.” He gazes up at the stars, at the rigging and the sails creaking against the masts. “I like this.”

He doesn’t mention that he likes her. He knows that would be overstepping his bounds.

“Then stay.” Isabela says it lightly, as though the words haven’t nearly left her tongue half a dozen times in the short week they’ve been aboard already.

“How can I?” asks Fenris.

Of course, Isabela reminds herself. It’s only sex. She’s only ever been his for sex, and Hawke is everything else.

“Just tonight, then?” she asks. She doesn’t know if it’s wise, but she understands sex. It’s something she knows she can handle.

He comes to her cabin, though, and she does her best to be more than her best, to be everything that Fenris requires. She meets his eyes as she comes and kisses him with lax, exhausted motions. His fingers are warm over her body. For the first time he does not leave before morning.

She counts it as a victory, at least she does until dawn breaks and they get up. Fenris ties the laces of his trousers and meets Hawke in the passageway, and when Isabela sees how they look at each other she pushes roughly past them.

They move around each other and talk so easily, their sentences flowing together as though they are one person accidentally broken into two bodies. Isabela is going to lose Fenris to her. She knows this. She always knew this. She hates that it hurts.

Despite Hawke’s insistence on knowing their plans there is no immediate move to abandon ship. Hawke moves slowly and sits for long hours in one place. Anders keeps by her, but not all healing can be done with magic. There are no books aboard except the one that Fenris brought, and he refuses to let that out from where it is carefully wrapped with what few precious items they all brought from Kirkwall. Merrill tells Dalish tales, and Isabela tells sordid tales, and after a while both Anders and Fenris are reminded of the stories they told in their respective captivities to pass the time.

It’s easy to forget what happened so long as they are here with strangers keeping the ship sailing over endless waves, the sky misting blue to grey to black, stars guiding their path to be replaced by an unforgiving sun come day.

The food is the same bland, boring affair day in, day out, and drinking water is rationed, alcohol even more difficult to come by. But, it’s a life. It’s a good life. They feel the weight of their pasts easing from their shoulders. Even Anders feels a little brighter, and does not completely resent his survival. 


	23. (feelings are scary)

They sail for two weeks like this, and then they are attacked. The ship is bearing Kirkwall flags, and Merrill destroys them with fire and electricity before they even have a chance to board. The second ship, a few days later, is harder to fight off. It’s metal-plated in case of mages, and they swing across to board them before Isabela’s crew has done much more than draw their weapons.

The crew don’t know how to cope in battle, and if it’s that their non-sailor passengers are so well versed in fighting that they have even half a chance. Fenris takes an arrow through the foot, though, and he grits his teeth while Anders heals it.

“You need to take me to shore,” Anders says, sitting back on his heels while Fenris massages the throbbing pain from his foot. The crew scrub away the carnage from the deck. “I am the one they are looking for.”

“They’re looking for me, too,” says Hawke. She looks at the others. “I think it’s time.”

They’ve been putting it off, really. It’s been so many years that parting now seems impossible. After everything they’ve been through… Hawke looks at Fenris, and Fenris finds he has to look away.

Isabela purposefully sails them into a bad current and then pretends that several coves are unsafe, all so that they can spend another week together. They crowd into each other’s space; Fenris spars with Hawke on the deck, and they sit for long hours in any space they can, talking and talking and talking, until eventually their words are nothing more than friendly arguments about which particular seabird just flew over their ship. Fenris comes to Isabela each night, but the sex is nearly cursory, something they have to do in order to have an excuse to lie next to each other as they sleep.

But it cannot last. Soon, they are sitting together for the last time. They try to find the most exciting foods left on board, as if they can make a feast. A last supper.

“I am eager to stand on something that isn’t moving,” confesses Merrill. “As soon as I think I’ve got my balance another wave comes.” To prove her point a wave hits the ship and a piece of cheese rolls down the table. Anders catches it and hands it back, without a word. They try to talk during that meal, but everything they try to say falls flat. The silence is stifling, and all the words seem stilted pretences of what they mean. Isabela hugs Merrill fiercely, taking her Captain’s Hat off her head and tugging it down onto Merrill.

“Keep it,” she says. “It will bring you luck, and I’ll get another.” She hugs Hawke, and tries to pretend there is no resentment between them. “I’m sorry about the relic.”

“Pah,” says Hawke. “It gave us an exciting summer, at least.”

Isabela wraps her arms around Anders. “Try to keep it together,” she whispers into his ear. “You’re too pretty to be lost on hopeless causes.”

That leaves Fenris.

The others are watching, but this is the only chance she has to say goodbye to Fenris. She wraps her arms around him, and as she does she realises with shock that she’s never just hugged him. It’s always been hug-and-grind, hug-and-shove-against-a-wall, hug-and-fuck. Not willing to break tradition she drives her hips against his and kisses him fiercely, until he has to break and gasp for air.

“You could stay,” she offers. There’s a beat where she thinks he might say yes, but he steps back, back towards Hawke, and climbs over the side of the ship into the rowboat. The crew lower it down to the water, and the oars slap the waves with each stroke.

She can feel him pulling away, like a string that slowly being dragged from the cavities of her heart. She’s not loved someone, not for a very long time. She curses herself for a coward and stamps back to her cabin. 


	24. Give Me A Reason

The shore seems a thousand miles away as Jensen rows them towards it. The sailor is ignorant of the pained looks his four passengers wear, knowing only what little he’s heard in dockside taverns and shipyard gossip. He’ll tell his children one day, he thinks. He sailed a ship carrying the Champion of Kirkwall. He won’t mention the Apostate. He doesn’t think that’s something to be proud of. The elves, of course, are only elves, and not interesting additions to any story.

Fenris looks towards the sand cast in the shadow of dusk, feeling the ship pulling away behind him. He grips his sword tight, afraid he’ll lash out at Jensen and demand to be taken back. His place is with Hawke. It is always with Hawke.

The boat bumps against sand and Jensen digs an oar into it. Anders jumps out and pulls it up the beach a little so the others can get out without wetting their feet. Merrill places her hand on Fenris’ shoulder to steady herself as she steps over the side, and immediately apologises in fear. Fenris doesn’t notice, and has to be prompted to hand across the bag by his feet. The water laps at the boat, and he hesitates when Hawke holds out a hand to help him from the boat.

Her fingers are soft against his scars, her eyes gentle even against the darkening sky. The last hints of day catch on her bright teeth as she gives a small smile of comfort.

“Go back to her,” she says, pushing him back into the boat.

“Hawke…” Whatever words he wants to stay stick in his throat. He wants her to know that he cannot leave her, that he is afraid that if she leaves his sight she’ll disappear from his life forever. He cannot bear to think that he might never see her again. She takes his face in her hands, stroking one thumb along his cheekbone.

“We’re family.” Her eyes are locked on his. “Go back to her.” She taught him how to read, how to talk to people, how to stand on his own two feet. She does not want him gone from her side, but she does not want him unhappy.

“What if she does not return what I feel?” His words are soft, conscious of the other people hearing this conversation.

“I’m sure we’ll be close by,” Hawke assures him. “If she does not… Find us. But you cannot come with me if you do not know.”

Fenris starts at her words, the line between his eyes deepening into a frown. “You will forbid it?”

“No,” Hawke says slowly. “But I would not want you regretting your decision. Go. Be certain. I will be here if you need.”

She lets him go, and he does not rise to get out of the boat. Anders pushes it out again, and Jensen rows them back.

 .

The crew are loud in bringing the boat back to its place on deck, and Isabela has half a mind to go and rip their vocal chords from their throats. A mute crew would be the best of all, she thinks. The cabin door opens with a bang and she jerks upright. The lecture on her tongue is carried away as Fenris stalks across the room.

The kiss makes her hot and wet and leaves her panting when he pulls away. She stares at him dumbly, and words do not rise on her tongue.

The table is covered in maps that she needs and she watches as he moves them aside with hands steadier than her own. He presses his fingertips into her thighs and her arse and lifts her up onto the table. He unlaces the top of her shirt and tugs it up over her head, then unbuckles her boots and slides them down her legs. He loves this slow uncovering of her skin, the slightly paler skin revealed inch by inch. He kisses her thigh and her knee and all down her shin, mapping her skin and remembering the taste of her.

He had intended for there to be words but he doesn’t know how to say this, so he kisses her with all the meaning he can muster. It’s about sex and it’s not about sex, and he’s glad to be touching her but more, he’s glad to be here, with her. She catches his hair in her hand and draws him back up to her. Their mouths meet, and their bodies fit together so well.

After, they lie together on the table, him stretched out and her with her head on his arm and fingers splayed over his chest. She’s afraid to speak.

If it were just sex he wouldn’t have come back. If it were just sex she wouldn’t be so glad he came back. But she hasn’t loved in a very long time, and look how it serves her: Hawke on a forgotten shore travelling with two apostates. A city in ruins for the second time. Sebastian dead. There’s too much that’s gone wrong and there’s too much emotion tangled with it, and she curls against Fenris instinctively. She freezes when she realises what she’s doing.

“You can feel it, too,” says Fenris. She feels his voice rumble in his chest, the way the noise echoes through her body.

“I think,” the words stick in her mouth and she wants to be anywhere else, doing anything else that isn’t lying here on his table with sweat drying over her saying these words to this man, “I think there’s more than just sex here.”

She’s recoiled in preparation for a laugh to curl out of his body and slide through her heart. He turns and lifts himself up from the wood a little to look at her.

“I would remain at your side,” he says. “If you would have me.”

“I would.” She reaches up and kisses him in relief.

“Hawke is out there,” says Fenris, continuing before she can protest her, of all people, being brought into this moment. “They think she’s still on this ship.”

“You want to lead them a merry dance through the seas? My dear, this ship is not fast enough and this crew too poor.”

“Then we’ll get a better one.” He’s groaning, pulling himself up from the hard flat wood and she follows.

“The best place for a crew is Rivain, in the Northern Passage.”

“Then we go there.”


	25. Gold To Steal

So, that was then. This is now. Now, they are standing on the dock in a city on the east coast close to the Cape of Rivain. Fenris still goes shoeless, and he keeps to tight black pants that loop over his feet, but his shirt billows now. His sword is strung over his back like it always was, but now a thick leather belt crosses his chest to keep it there. His tattoos stand out even more starkly against skin that is now nearly as dark as Isabela’s. On the ship she bullies him to take off his shirt so that the tan is more even, and on the ship he’s willing to comply. Here, he hides his identity as much as he can. His hair is a little longer than it was in years past, and he ties it with a piece of red ribbon. The Amell crest is in a chest on the ship.

Isabela keeps to her extraordinary boots, her thick gold necklace, her white shirt. Her daggers are on her back, a knife at her hip, several others in her boots, a series of small wires hidden in various places. Her hair is kept the same, and her brown eyes study the harbour.

“Any you like?” asks Fenris as he fidgets. Isabela teases him for it; he cannot seem to stand still for more than a few minutes. He peers at his feet or twists around to look behind him, picks at his nails or scratches his neck. Today, he is fidgeting sideways.

“They look rubbish. Oh, look, a bar!” She looks down at him. “Do you mind?”

Fenris rolls his eyes.

“Go ahead,” he says. Despite everything she seemed to be in Kirkwall, she refrained from flirting with her crew. There’s a certain level of decorum that must be kept, she told him, and he had nodded sagely. It’s been too long since she flirted with anyone new, and her eyes are bright at the prospect.

“I love that you’re so understanding,” she says kissing his cheek. Fenris keeps his face stoically blank, then takes a step, veering to the side. “Easy, elf,” she laughs, catching his arm, and helps him walk in a semi-straight line to the bar.

“‘E looks to have had enough,” says the barman.

“Nah,” says Isabela. “Just got off ship.” Fenris decides to copy Isabela, and leans on the bar for support. It’s strange to have the floor steady and stable beneath him. “What do you have?” she asks.

“We go’ ale, and we go’ whiskey.”

“Whiskey, then.”

“No wine?” asks Fenris. His ears droop a little.

“No wine.”

“Whiskey,” he says glumly. He waits for the man to pour them each a scant amount for the coin it costs, and turns to find Isabela already sauntering up to a table of sailors. He sighs, sips at his mug, and recoils sharply at the taste. He passes it to the man beside him at the bar and takes the other to Isabela.

Ten minutes off a ship and already she’s in a bar flirting with strange men. He pushes aside the uneasy feeling he has; he knows that Isabela loves to flirt, and he knows he has no command over her. Having limited options forced them into monogamy, but it isn’t a conversation they’ve had. He can’t be - shouldn’t be - jealous about something like this.

He goes outside, bumping slightly against the door frame. That earth doesn’t tip and dip with each moment is strange, and he rocks as he walks. He pushes hair out of his eyes, looking at the ships, looking at the sea. Already he’s tired of dirt underneath his toes. He wants to be out in the endless blue again.

A hand claps on his arm and he nearly leaps out of his skin, phasing to blue and spinning.

“Woah, hold up, son.” The old man who had accosted him jumps back and Fenris shakes himself out of the Fade. “I mean no harm.”

“My apologies,” Fenris stutters, “I have not been amongst strangers for some time.”

The man’s leaning away, staring at Fenris as though he’s seen a demon. “You’ve just come ashore?”

“How did you know?” asks Fenris suspiciously. He’s not sure of the man, and is keenly aware of the fact that he and Isabela are, technically, on the run from Kirkwall.

The man knows because he’s never seen an elf like this before, but he doesn’t say that. “You’re standing with a decided slant to you, boy. I see you just left Pat’s.”

Fenris casts a dark look over his shoulder at the bar. “They don’t have wine.”

“Fancy that! I do. Name’s Arnald. Come have a drink with me, boy, and tell me what you’re looking for.”

Fenris narrows his eyes. “What if I’m not looking for anything?”

“You don’t put in here unless you want something,” says Arnald. “And I know everyone and everything.”

Fenris still doesn’t move. “In return for what?”

“You’re a mighty suspicious elf. I don’t get knowledge without talking. You’ve come here in a Kirkwall ship, and the rumours from that place are all very muddled. And,” he adds, pushing a bit, “you can tell me how you just flashed blue. You don’t look like a mage.”

Fenris suspects he’s making a foolish decision, but he follows the man and sits at the seat offered. It’s another bar, this one open to the world with only a thin roof providing a bit of shade from the relentless sun. A few men nod at Arnald, and he gestures at the barman, who brings over another glass. Fenris does not speak until he has tried the wine, sighing as it slips down his throat.

“I haven’t had wine for months.” With two to drink it the wine he brought from Kirkwall disappeared even faster, though Isabela didn’t appreciate the taste quite as much as he did. “For this, I will answer questions.” He takes another mouthful, and his lip quirks in contentment. The wine is full in his mouth, sweet and strong. He will have be certain to use whatever coin they have left over to buy a potion of this.

“First,” says Arnald. “Your name. And then that blue thing you did. You’re no mage, at least, no mage I’ve ever seen.”

So Fenris explains as much as he dares to explain, and Arnald tells him where he can find a crew both honourable and trustworthy in a fight, and they drink the wine until Isabela leaves Pat’s bar and saunters towards them.

“I see you’ve been making friends,” she grins at them. “Isabela.”

“Arnald.”

“Arnald’s told us where we can find a crew.”

“Excellent. I won us a ship.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “What did you do?”

“Little bit of flirting, little bit of cheating.” She grinned. “Come on, Broody. We’ve got gold to steal.”


	26. Collar For The Pet

Problems start fast, within the first week. New people on a new ship, they step tentatively around each other and then they get in each other’s faces. Some of the crew know each other but too many don’t, and under a new command they aren’t sure how to stand, which way to twist the cables, when to unfurl the sails. Isabela lashes out a few people, and they at her, but soon they settle. She’s glad, she thinks, that there’s no such problems between her and Fenris. They know each other, they move easily together, familiar with each other’s ways. She’s proud, and then she tries to share the contents of a chest she liberated from a cave on a set of narrow islands far from anything else.

He’s standing by the porthole, half-sitting on a chest of drawers. The lantern glints from the salty glass, turning the window into a mirror. Isabela is perched on the narrow bed, rifling through pieces of metal that clink and shine.

“Here,” she says, holding up a narrow, circular band. “You’d look good in gold.” She approaches him with swift steps and tries to push the thing around his neck. It’s a thick piece of gold that suits his dark skin, and she’s eager to see what he thinks.

The cold metal touches him before he realises what is happening. He stumbles back, crashing into a set of drawers and then sideways. His shoulders thump against the wooden wall.

“What are you doing?” he gasps, eyes wide.

“Giving you a gift,” she says, her hurt at his rejection obvious in her voice. “What’s wrong with that?”

Fenris lifts a hand and does not touch his fingers to his own neck. She realises far too late what she’s done. “Oh, Fen, I didn’t…”

“Do not call me that!” he snaps. He lashes out, smashing the golden choker out of her grip. It clatters onto the floor. “I’m not yours to collar,” he passes a hand through his hair. His fingers catch in the ends and he pulls them out roughly, small pieces of white kinked hair caught in his hands.

“I would never,” says Isabela. She tries to approach him but he stands firm and glares at her, and she thinks better of it. “I never told you how my mother sold me,” she says lightly.

Fenris blinks, but the revelation doesn’t quiet him the way Isabela hopes it would. “And did your master rape you and implant lyrium beneath your skin? Did he bind you and beat you and force you to wear his symbol around his neck?”

Isabela shakes her head.“I would never think I owned you, Fenris,” she carefully annunciates each syllable of his name. “You are your own person.”

“I cannot,” he gestures at the thing on the ground. “My neck. You know this already,” he adds. She does. He refuses to have her hands on his neck, except at the back. The soft skin of his throat where the lines are can be touched with lips but never hands. It’s something she’s learned and not consciously noticed, just as she’s noticed he’s ticklish and so needs a firm touch down the sides of his waist, knows that he likes the skin around his nipples bitten, knows he likes her nails dug into the soft flesh of his hips…

“My apologies,” she says. “I was not thinking.”

If she expects him to forgive her she is disappointed. “Do not do it again,” he snarls. He leaves her in her cabin with her golden trinkets. They share a room - the ship does not afford them the luxury of spending nights apart, and though Fenris became used to that on the Kirkwall ship in moments like these he loathes it. He walks to the bow and steps out onto the bowsprit, his elvish feet keeping him steady despite the buffeting waves. The sails are drawn up for the night, and there is a sailor at the helm. Fenris finds a place by the weathered figurehead, to wait out this mood that he feels curling into him.

After all, the ship is very small, and he knows that Isabela meant nothing by it. Still, he feels nasty, like dirt has been ground through his innards, and it needs to pass before he sees her again. 

 

Isabela, in the cabin, wants to wash her mouth out with soap and water. Fresh water is, as it always in on a ship, in rationed supply, so instead she settles for sulking on the bed amongst her treasure. She’ll sell it all, she thinks. If she picks the right merchant she’ll make good coin, and there’s no point keeping it now that it’s tainted by Fenris’ reaction.

Sulking does not suit her. Unable to sit still she goes through the rest of the things. The cabin is small and narrow, still bigger than anything else on the ship but for two people, one used to a whole mansion to himself, it’s not big enough. There’s a bed against the wall and a chest of drawers beside it, a chest at the end of the bed, and a mirror on the wall by the door. She opens the chest at the end of the bed and looks in. Fenris keeps his sword beneath the bed, the only area long enough to store it, but in here is his armour and here is the piece of red ribbon he used to wear on his wrist. It’s frayed and knotted several times, and he has a new piece to keep his hair out of his face. He still keeps the Amell family crest on his belt.

There is a long coat here, one that she plans to wear in cold weather, and beneath that… She takes out the coat beneath that and holds it up to the light. The lantern flickers and dodges, trying not to let the coat out of the shadow, but Isabela puts the coat onto the bed and brings the lantern over.

There’s no mistaking it.

She leaves it there and goes to find Fenris. The man at the helm shakes his head and points at the bow, and she sees white hair blurring with the moonlight on the waves. He’s beautiful, she thinks, and her feet hesitate on the stairs before going down to the deck to get him.

“I’ve something you need to see,” she says.

“I have no desire to go back yet,” he snaps. “Leave me alone.”

“Brood later,” she says. “I promise you’ll want to see this.”

She holds out a hand, which he ignores, his feet easily stepping along the narrow piece of wood and back into the ship. Isabela always thought she was fast up the rigging, but Fenris is as sure-footed as a cat even in the foulest of weather. The sailors now wait for Fenris to go up first, and if something is caught or broken he’s the one they ask to fix it. She tries to take his hand again, but he pulls away from her and walks on his own back to their cabin.

“What is it?” he asks, glaring at her and not looking at the bed. She has to step close to him to get through the door and he shrinks back. She tries not to let it hurt her, tries to tell herself that he’ll forgive her, but it hurts.

“I found this.”

“Another collar?” he growls, turning, and his voice stops in his mouth. He swallows them down. “Why is that here?”

“I moved this chest from the Kirkwall ship.” Fenris nods; he knew that already. “Obviously he left it behind.”

Fenris touches the feathers, then picks up Anders’ coat. “I do not remember when he stopped wearing it,” he says.

“A mage in feathers was perhaps too noticeable for him to risk.”

“Perhaps,” says Fenris. He feels sad to be touching the coat. It reminds him of Hawke more than Anders, and so sadness overrides any anger he feels towards the mage. “I hope they are well,” he adds.

“So do I,” Isabela says softly.

They fold the coat up and do not talk of it. Though Fenris relieves one of the crew to take his turn on deck when Isabela wakes it is to find his arms around her, and she knows she is forgiven. 


	27. Sail

They sail the seas. They sail the seas through storms that lash at the rigging and sends even Isabela, Captain, scurrying up the ropes to lash down the sails. They sail over seas that are nearly perfectly still, the sails lax against the masts and the sailors idly playing dice or cards, waiting for the weather to pick up so there’s something to do.

Fenris is not First Mate, he is not anything except a sailor whose commands the others listen to when they meet a ship in battle.

“I miss Merrill,” says Isabela. “Remember her fire bolts?”

“There are slaves on board,” growls Fenris.

“I wasn’t being serious,” says Isabela. “Of course we wouldn’t set it on fire. Not right away,” she adds.

Fenris hefts his sword and looks across the waves at the ship that’s angling towards them. They’re going to board, and Isabela’s crew are dancing and eager for a fight. The seas have been calm for too long.

The ship they’ve been hunting is a slaver ship. It’s cargo is live, and the soldiers on deck are armed and prepared to defend their pay.

Fenris waits for Isabela to give the order, and then he swings into the fray. 


	28. Refugees of Kirkwall

Hawke yanks on the horse’s head. They’re walking up a steep slope and so they are not riding. Merrill’s given up on hauling her horse, nimbly dancing up the mountain while her horse trails behind Hawke’s.

Anders comes behind.

His boots are so worn that he imagines he can feel each individual piece of dirt that he is stepping on. He does not have his coat and cannot recall if he left it in Kirkwall or on the ship, or beside whatever nearly flat bit of mud they curled up on in those days after leaving Isabela behind. He does not mind it in this moment, with sweat dripping down his spine, but he knows the moment he stops he will miss it desperately, and he so wants to stop. His throat is dry and the water is on Merrill’s horse, so he cannot call out to Hawke to stop. He keeps walking.

He hates this.

Hawke is not much happier. Her horse keeps refusing to move, and Merrill’s horse does not want to stop. The two geldings are at odds in this, and Hawke wants to stop but knows that if she does she will not start again.

She misses her mansion. She misses Fenris. She misses - dare she say it, she misses Kirkwall.

She pulls on the horse’s head again, and takes another step up the steep mountain. Before, she would look up the slope and see the sky, and think how soon it is that she’ll be at the top, but each new rise just reveals another hill beyond it.

So she walks.

This is it. This is her legacy.

Father brother sister mother. Dead. City: burned. Friends: dead or scattered. And her, with an elvish blood mage and a man whose face is impossibly known across what seems to be all of Thedas.

She killed two people at the last tavern they tried to stop in, and then she hurried Anders out. He cut off his hair and he’s trying to grow a beard, but she’s learning why he only ever had stubble: his beard does not grow. That jaw, it seems, refuses to be hidden.

They make camp slowly and painfully, going through motions they know they must when really all they want to do is massage a bit of life back into their aching feet and sleep wherever they fall.

Anders has given up apologising. Hawke keeps telling him it’s as much her fault as his, for taking sides, and Merrill knows what crimes she is guilty of. 


	29. No Words

The morning dawns slowly, a stretch of colours that trail over the water and lace upwards into the sky. Isabela is already up, and Fenris wakes in a lonely bed with a cold pillow beside him. He yawns, stretches, and picks up his clothes from where he neatly folded them the night before. He addresses his hair in the small, rusted mirror on the wall before going to join Isabela on the deck. The sailors are awake and breakfasting in the cool morning air, their skin reflecting the pinks of the sun.

Isabela wordlessly hands him a piece of bread and kisses him on the cheek. He tolerates that sort of casual contact for her sake, just as she tolerates his standoffishness and muted conversations. He will never be the lively dinner guest that Hawke or Varric is, each smile an unexpected treasure, but she would have him no other way.

Maker, she thinks, letting out a heavy breath, she loves him. He puts a hand close to hers on the wood as they look out over the deck. Their pinky fingers touch.

“Good weather,” comments Isabela. “We should make good speed.” Fenris nods. “Eat, then unfurl the sails. Those documents we took from _Cashil_ suggest we’ll find another ship if we move fast enough.”

“Slaves?”

Isabela nods and grins. “And hopefully supplies, or money for supplies.”

Fenris nods, his expression a mixture of sternness and sleep. Isabela smiles, glad for her life: a man at her side, a boat beneath her feet, the sea at her command. 


	30. Fire in the Harbour

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the kids following along at home, updates will be a little slower for the next week or so. I have a rowing regatta and then I'm going camping, and very little time between exercise and sleeping for this.

They’re counting coins in the quarterdeck. Fenris is not counting - he’s sharpening his sword - but he’s keeping score of the numbers on a piece of card beside him, and when Isabela says a number he scratches it down. His hair has been shorn short again, red ribbon returned to his wrist while his hair tangles thick and white over his ears. His shirt is open down his chest, the laces hanging loose. He curls his bare toes against the wooden floor, the lyrium glinting in the light.

“Fourteen,” says Isabela, and he sets the whetstone down to mark the number on his paper. “That is all of it,” she adds, and he wordlessly hands her the paper and quill so that she can add the numbers and split it between the crew. She and Fenris get equal amounts, while the rest get varying amounts depending on their tasks - First Mate gets more than the cabin boy, who is actually a girl and an elf and her fleet feet race from bow to stern carrying orders even in the thick of battle. Fenris never knows what to do with his money, and Isabela spends it for him.

She tallies the numbers and frowns at them.

“Are you sure you copied these down right?”

“What is it?” asks Fenris, but Isabela is up and striding towards the door. Fenris stands and picks up the paper, running his fingers down the numbers. He is keenly aware that his writing is not the fluid sprawl that most others manage, but it is his writing and he earned the right to it. The numbers are all in order. He looks at the piles of coins, and does not understand the issue.

Isabela marches back with Yusef in tow. The First Mate’s raven-like eyes dart around the room, taking in Fenris and the sword and the maps scattered across the table or rolled up waiting to be of use. It is a habit with him, assessing anew even the most familiar of areas.

He takes the paper and reads the numbers, and looks as Isabela.

“This is a lot,” he says. His thick black hair rolls over his shoulders, and he pushes a piece away from where it has tangled with his stubbled jaw. “This is more than I expected.”

“Yes,” says Isabela. “This is a problem.”

“Making money is not a problem,” laughs Yusef.

“But making so much from slavers is,” says Isabela.

“Ah,” says Yusef. Fenris finally understands Isabela’s concern. “I’ll set double watch from now on. Perhaps,” he glances at Fenris, but decides to say his thoughts anyway, “perhaps we should hesitate before attacking another slaver ship.”

“If we see one, it will burn,” says Fenris. It’s not a snarl; Yusef knows Fenris’ feelings on slavery and he need not add any bite to his tone for the man to understand.

“Of course,” says Yusef. “Perhaps we will rid Thedas of slavery,” he adds lightly. He bows his head, and takes his leave.

 

The sailors complain until they find that the reason they have double watch is that they’re making too much money from the murder they’re committing. There’s some arguments amongst the crew, then, about how much money each owes the others from cards, and Isabela decrees that there’ll be no games for a week. They’re like children, she mutters, and Fenris can only agree.

They’re deadly children, though, and they understand their job. When someone sees a light too low on the horizon and in the wrong place to be a star, there’s knocking on Isabela’s cabin door. Fenris is already awake, and he slips out of bed and tugs on a shirt. He’s on deck before Isabela has even woken up. The sky is the dark blueish grey of the very early morning, the stars shifted in their patterns so that Fenris could, if he looks up, tell the time. He takes the glass from the sailor and holds it to his eye.

“Slavers,” says the sailor.

“They’re a way off yet,” says Fenris. “Wake the others. We’ll be in battle by dawn.”

“We’re too close to the coast,” says Isabela. The shore isn’t visible even with the spyglass, but their maps say that only a few more clicks to the south and there’ll be waves crashing over rocks. “We shouldn’t.”

“This is a slaver route,” growls Fenris. Of course, it mightn’t be a slaver ship, and at this distance it’s too hard to tell what colours it wears and what presses the seams full to bursting.

Isabela knows there was never a question about it, and her hesitation is more for show. “Wake the men,” she says to the sailor. “Send Esther to me.”

The cabin boy comes, rubbing sleep from her eyes. Her short hair sticks up in all directions, but she’s ready to attention.

“We’ve a ship,” says Isabela. Esther nods.

“Breakfast, ca’pn?” she asks. Isabela side-eyes Fenris, who gives a short nod. Esther runs off to the galley.

Breakfast is old bread and last night’s dinner mushed together and swallowed down with a cup of cold gruel. The sailors grumble at the cold morning air and watch the ship as it moves steadily closer. Isabela sends a few of them up the rigging to adjust the sails, and stands at the wheel waiting. The ship coming towards them seems to be moving too fast for the wind. Isabela is tacking, shifting the ship starboard then port-side so that it can move against the wind, but the wind is not so strong that even carried by it a ship should be moving as fast as the one they are watching.

Fenris fiddles with the spyglass, trying to make out the lines of the ship against the dark water. He makes no noise, only hands the glass to Isabela.

“Oh,” she breathes. She steps to the top of the stairs and looks down at the deck, where her sailors and soldiers are one and the same, waiting for orders. “We are fighting a galley ship,” she calls down to them, and there’s an immediate buzz.

It’s not that the slaves are the cargo, but the slaves are the machine that keeps the ship going. Galley ships, she thinks, are worse. For these sailors their life on a ship means freedom to travel where they will when they will, with only their only limit the weather and the length of the ocean. For slaves it’s a trap: no land to flee to, no place to hide.

Isabela’s sailors are free men, some ex-slaves and some merely trapped by the world and demanding to be free. None of them want more than the freedom to travel where they will, when they will. These are their choices: to destroy those who will not allow others power over their own lives.

They stand up and begin to move, warming their bodies up. Like Fenris, they are eager for the battle to begin.

 

The battle is hard. Usually they’d fight the men and usher the slaves off the ship in the same moment, tossing glass bottles of potent potions into the sails, but with slaves chained to the oars they cannot set the ship on fire.

They do the next best thing. They fight the soldiers and Fenris slices the captain into two pieces. He falls in wet, heavy clumps onto the deck, and the soldiers’ weapons follow as they surrender. The slaves are unchained and brought into the bountiful space on Isabela’s ship, and the slavers are chained up in their place.

“Now,” says Isabela, walking down between the rows of oars, “we’re close to shore, so killing you might be a little obvious. We’re going to send you into the harbour, and let the law do with you as they will.”

She claps her Second Mate on the arm as she passes him on deck. “Keep them straight,” she says. Teagan nods, her muscled legs firm on the rolling deck. The wind has picked up and the waves are nearly too big for the shallow draft of the galley ship, but the clouds are light enough that the pale dawn is showing through. The slavers are unused to the task of rowing and they move slowly, the Spiral following beside them.

The harbour is busy despite the early hour - or, really, because of it. Those who live by the rules of the sea bother less with the hour of the day.

Teagan, standing at the helm, ties the wheel down so that the ship will run straight. The slavers down in the hold cannot see anything, do not know that Teagan has leapt from the ship and one of the sailors on the Spiral is notching an arrow, dipping it in fire and then.

Then the ship bursts into flame, the potions and oils that Teagan tossed over the deck catching fire easily. The sails melt with the heat of it, and the slavers begin to scream.

The sailors send a rope down into the water for Teagan to grab, and she pulls herself aboard easily and turns to watch the ship. The people at the docks are running and shouting, but there’s nothing they can do. The ship rolls to the side and crashes into the water. The screams are swallowed by the roar of the flames, and Isabela calls to her sailors and they ride the waves out of the harbour. 


	31. The Rot

“Oh, Fen,” says Isabela. She’s stroking his hair, him curled up around her while she sprawls over the pillows, their legs tangled together in the sheets. The bed is narrow, and it’s good that they prefer to sleep like this. There is no way for them to lie together and not touch.

“You’re worried,” he says.

“I did not expect it all to get so serious so fast.” He runs his hand around the edge of bandages on her stomach, avoiding the centre where her skin is tender and broken. They found another slaver ship, empty of slaves but with the money and the traders aboard. The fight was good, and Fenris feels satisfied through to his bones. He’s clean now, and smelling of the salt water he washed himself in. Isabela, too, but she was cut during the battle and the pain is thick through her body.

Today, they hanged a woman.

Her name was Analise, and her ship was named for her sister. Such a sweet story of family love, children growing up on the sea and then buying their own ships, sisters together in business and battle. In the hold were people living with rotting flesh.

There’s a disease that’s common enough on ships but most common on slave ships, one that eats at flesh and crumbles bones. It thrives in salted, wet conditions, where people do not eat enough or bathe often enough.

Isabela makes her sailors wash themselves once every two days, and twice a month a sail is lowered over the edge of the ship to make a sort of pool that the crew can bathe more properly in. Their bedding is strung out to dry off whenever possible, ditto clothes.

Slaves don’t have that kind of luxury.

So in the hold of the _Jessica_ , under the command of Analise, people fall apart alive. The stench itself is gruesome, and then there is the sight of men and women and children, mostly elves, though not all, with skin stretched thin over bones and pus leaking from gaping holes. Most cannot walk; many have lost their eyesight. They turn their heads slowly to reveal empty eye sockets.

“How in Andraste’s name were you going to sell them?” cries Isabela. The fury in her voice is muted, while Fenris literally glows in rage. He takes a step towards Analise. Isabela’s crew shrink back; they’re afraid of the white-tattooed elf, and now he’s growling and glowing, and many are making plans to take their pay and leave Isabela’s crew as soon as possible. Isabela is unafraid, and snaps out and arm, catching Fenris before he phases through her and kills Analise.

“You’re not proposing we let her live?” Fenris yells right into her face.

The slaves - the people. They’re ill, and they’re dying, and there’s a cure for the disease but only in its early stages. Once it’s reached the eyes you’re better off dead. If they had the strength they’d probably be letting themselves fall over the side into the waves. As it is, only two have managed to make it as much as halfway up the steep stairs to blink at the sunlight.

“No,” says Isabela. “I’m proposing we use her as a warning.”

“We set a ship on fucking fire,” snarls Fenris. It’s bad if he’s swearing, and though her heart is pounding she keeps her grip firm on his arm. “What more of a warning does Thedas need to stop this trade?”

“Hang her,” says Isabela. Her voice is hard. “And the rest. Hang them from the yards. We’ll find a harbour and send it in.”

“And these,” Fenris gestures at the slaves. “What do we do with them?”

“Yusef,” calls Isabela. “Find those that can walk. Wash them and give them new clothes. The others,” she does not look at Fenris. “I will see to the others.”

In the end, Fenris does not leave the task to her alone. They share the gruesome burden of finding which of the people in the hold are too ill to be cared for, too ill to survive. They make their ends quick, and Fandrial walks amongst them to give what little peace the Maker has finally deigned to offer them.

 


	32. Strange Lands

Anders has long been in the habit of sleeping little, and now with Justice gone evil within him he is terrified of the Fade, scared that he’ll come face-to-face with what was once his friend. So, though he lies down while the sky is black he mostly catches only a few hours. On this morning when he first opens his eyes to see the last stars of the morning still glinting in the sky he does not bother to move, nor does he try to sleep again. He is warm under his blankets and Merrill is snoring a little, curled close to Hawke. The three of them often sleep close together, sharing the same blankets. It’s warm, if nothing else, and they’ve been through so much that they do not want to spend that first groggy moment of being awake wondering where the others are. Anders can feel Hawke’s pulse against his fingertips, and she is breathing soft on his neck.

The horses are quietly shuffling amongst each other. They, too, stand with noses touching and shoulders close.

Anders watches the stars, his nose growing cold in the air.

There is another noise. One neither from his sleeping companions or the horses.

He waits a single heartbeat, to be sure that he heard it. Sometimes there are foxes or deer, and it would be foolish to wake his friends up for something so mundane. But then, it would be foolish to let them sleep if it is something more. He finds Hawke’s hand and grips it tight. He knows she’s woken up nearly immediately, and she in turn has woken Merrill. The three lie still in the dawning light. The noise comes again. Footsteps, and armour clinking.

They move.

Anders does not like to pull on his magic, not with Justice turned evil within him, but he holds his staff with the sharpened blade out, falling behind Hawke who stands with her sword in one hand, other close to her belt ready to draw her long dagger.

“Halt,” she says. “Halt or I’ll kill you.” Merrill, who can see better in the dark and is the only one able to attack at a distance, is ready beside her.

“No,” says a voice. “Mercy, please.”

The voice is familiar.

Hawke lowers her sword a little.

“Why are you here?”


	33. A Return

“Oh, Bela” sighs Isabela. “When did we get mixed up in politics?” She answers herself, since no one else is around. “I think perhaps when we set that ship on fire and sent it sailing into the harbour.” She rolls her head back against the wall of the cell she is in, and considers. “Or maybe when we hanged the Captain of the Jessica.”

Isabela looks around at the ship’s hold. The only light seeps in through cracks and openings to the outside world, and it’s dim and damp down here. Isabela tries again to ease the ropes around her, but still they hold her fast. Reaching even one of the knives that Isabela keeps in her boots is impossible.

“Think he’ll come?” she asks herself, and immediately chides, “of course he will.”

Isabela tries to get her head together. It’s been a while since she was tied up with such a probable death. Fenris has already been thrown overboard. Remembering that brings her to another thought, one she was interrupted from having earlier by having her head smashed against the deck.

Fenris was tied and tossed overboard, and Isabela is going to be taken to shore to be made an example off. But Fenris will come. He will save her. She tries to force her doubts out her mind.

This is difficult to do, because Isabela’s mind is enjoying reminding her of one simple fact: Fenris cannot swim.

She may be in a bit of a pickle.

 

* * *

 

Fenris can’t swim. It’s a fact he probably should have realised before agreeing to follow Isabela across the seas. He’s drowning. It’s literal.

His white hair fans around him and wafts in front of his eyes. He never knew it was so pale, almost translucent. The water is a murky blue, his hands are tied tight with thick rope, and he never thought he’d die like this.

He closes his eyes, and thinks of Isabela, of Zevran. He thinks of Hawke. He remembers Kirkwall, and he thinks of the sea.

He breathes in, and water gushes into his lungs. His ears are in agony, his throat is burning from the salt.

 

He stops feeling.

 

 

A hand grasps his hair.

 

 

His lungs are burning, and he cannot see. He coughs, and he coughs, and his nose is a world of agony from the saltwater that’s washed through it. He stares at the decking and heaves up his guts, before finally flopping onto his arse and looking up at his saviour, who's talking.

"I looked overboard, not much else to do, only ocean and more ocean," the man gives a little chuckle, "but there were some jellyfish a while back and I thought there might be another bloom, and I look down and there's this white blob, which didn't look very jellyfish like - that's a compliment, I'm sure -"

Fenris interrupts him with cough, then manages to heave out the words, “What in the Maker’s name are you doing here?”

"Aw, not even a kiss in thanks for saving your life? Maybe a little one?"

Fenris coughs up more water from his lungs, and takes the skin of water offered. He gulps a mouthful, swills it around his mouth, and spits it at Zevran’s boots. The elf jumps back.

“Easy on,” he cries. “These are fine Antivan leather!”

“You have a ship.” Zevran puts out a hand and Fenris grabs it. He’s lifted to his feet and comes eye to eye with a man he has not seen in well over a year.

“I do. Won it in a bet, thought I’d see if I could remember how to Captain.”

Fenris does kiss him then, a harsh press of lips on lips that surprises him as much as it surprises Zevran. “Turn the ship around. We need to save Isabela.”

 

 

“Captain! Captain!” a crew-member calls, the sound distant through the deck. “A ship!”

Isabela stops her pointless wriggling. The ropes are no looser for her efforts, while her skin is rubbed raw.

“One of ours?” calls the Captain.

“Tevinter! They’re signalling to board!”

Isabela freezes. They’ve burned Tevinter ships, her and Fenris, and now they’re hunted by that great nation. This is not a betterment to the situation. She struggles more determinedly. A knife is suddenly pressing against her throat, the woman holding it through the bars of the cell.

“You will stay still,” says the woman on the other end. “Or this will go a little deeper.” She feels her skin opening around the sharpness of the blade, and a driblet of blood runs down her front, soaking into the neckline of her shirt. She holds still, and wait in fear for the sounds of the other ship coming close.

There are noises, bumping of wood on wood, and the footsteps over the deck. Isabela looks up, as though the wood will melt away to reveal her new captors.

“Bring her up!” calls the Captain, and there are hurried steps down into the hold and then her cell is being opened.

“No funny business,” scowls the sailor as she grabs Isabela by the ropes that hold her tight.

“With you?” sneers Isabela. “Not even if you begged me.” The woman makes a disgusted noise in the back of her throat.

Isabela is half-dragged, half-carried onto the deck. Her eyes are lifted high in defiance of whoever dares to think they can imprison her. Then she sees him.

White hair. White tattoos.

He holds out a knife, long and thin and not his. It’s familiar, though.

“You tried to kill me,” he says, knife levelled at the Captain’s throat. The Captain is defiant.

“And what? You, alone, think you’ll take this woman with you?”

“Ah, but see, he is not alone.”

Zevran jumps over the side of the ship and saunters across the deck. “Hello, Isabela. You’re looking as good as you always do tied up.”

“Perv,” she smiles. “Care to untie me?”

“Isn’t that Fenris’ job these days?”

“I have no claim to her where you are concerned,” says Fenris. His knife is steady against the thumping pulse of the Captain. “Anyone disagree with me killing this,” he bites back the word ‘person’, because the Captain of this ship is not a person. Anyone who stands against those who destroy slavers are, in Fenris’ mind, lesser beings than blight-ridden nugs crawling through the Deep Roads that wind beneath the earth.

Zevran is standing closer to Isabela than is necessary for his knife to cut the knots, and the sailors let him while Fenris threatens the Captain.

“There are only three!” cries the Captain. “Fight them!”

Fenris lets the knife go and phases blue. He crackles, the Fade rippling over his skin. He can feel skin and bone through his hand as he pushes into the Captain’s chest. The heart is beating fast and it slips between his fingers before he is able to grab hold of it. He pushes, presses, feels the blood and tissue sliding beneath his fingertips. He knows the crew have gone white in fear, and he grins a little as he squeezes.

“You should not have drowned me,” he whispers to the Captain. The Captain’s face is white, eyes wide.

Fenris grips tight and pulls hard. He keeps his hand around the heart as he pulls himself from the Fade. He is left with only a piece of it, hardly any of the heart, really, only a small part of thick muscle wet with blood, and he drops it with a thud onto the deck.

“Anyone else care to try to kill me?” he calls across the deck.

Swords clatter to the ground.

Despite their surrender Fenris refuses to let them live. They took to the sea under a Captain who took money from slavers. Their wages were paid from the selling of human chattel, and they were not ignorant of this fact.

“And if they had no other choice?” asks Zevran in mild protest.

“I would rather starve than work for slavers,” spits Fenris. He has no sympathy for these wretches, no matter their life. Zevran and Isabela, both sold as if they were property rather than people, understand the venom in his voice.

“Burn their ship,” says Isabela, and her tone brooks no argument. 

 

“Where to now, m’lady?” asks Zevran, standing by the helm of the Tevinter ship. The plume of smoke from the other ship is a haze on the horizon, though the screams from the burning crew have long since faded.

“Our crew are imprisoned on the _Spiral_ ,” says Isabela. “We need to get them back.”

“Ah,” he does not bother to mask his disappointment. “And then you are away over the seas again?”

“Well,” begins Isabela. She looks at Fenris. She’s used to having just him, and though sometimes she misses flirting and fucking anyone at anytime, on a ship far from shore there aren’t many options and perhaps monogamy is what happens with love. She doesn’t know; she hasn’t really done this before.

Fenris looks across the ship at the rigging of the fore staysails. The crew are from everywhere, and he can hear Tevene amongst the rest of the words shouted out and snatched up by the wind.

He remembers how Zevran felt, soft skin and hard muscles lined with scars. And Isabela would probably not say no… “Your ship looks bigger than ours,” offers Fenris. “And Teagan was telling me she’d like her own ship someday.”

Zevran grins. “Two more for the crew, then?”

Isabela holds up a hand. “Only if I’m Captain," she says firmly. 

“I’m sure we can work something out."

So, thinks Zevran. This could be fun.

 


	34. Two Elves and a Pirate

It’s fun through the first cabin and then into the next, where they tumble onto a bed.

“I don’t miss your gauntlets,” says Zevran, tugging at the laces of Fenris’ pants.

“I do,” says Isabela, almost moaning, as hands slide along her thighs and up under her shirt. “They were so perfectly scratchy.”

“They’re in,” Fenris groans as a hand gently tightens around his cock. “The chest. Over,” he jerks his head. “Over there. If you want them.” Zevran is naked and warm and intermittently smooth and rough, scarred and weather-beaten, and concentrating is difficult. A hand grabs Fenris and pulls him off.

“No fair,” Isabela declares. “I’m the Captain.”

They are willing to pay more than enough attention to her, and she will never, not even if she lives to be a thousand and these two elves never leave her side, get used to the feeling of four hands on her, teasing her and touching her and stroking her.

Of course, it is a little messy. There’s three of them, and they’re all demanding even at the best of times. It’s difficult to organise themselves on the narrow bed in the rolling ship, but they manage. After, they lie in an awkward sweaty bundle. Fenris idly strokes a piece of skin until Isabela moans, her face pressed against Zevran’s neck.

“If you keep that up I’ll want to go again, and I do not have the energy,” she says. Fenris snatches his hand away, and Zevran laughs. 


	35. Wandering Brother

“I thought you were dead,” says Hawke.

“I’m not. Anders, can you please put that down?”

“Last I heard you were going to kill me. Half a year ago I wouldn’t have minded, but here I am, alive, and I find I rather like being that way. So forgive me, but I will stand poised to strike you down if you come any closer.” He shifts his grip on his staff a little, blades ready to slash through skin.

Sebastian stands with his hands to his side, trying to shrink down and look as disarming as possible. He didn’t mean to stumble across this group, and his heart is pounding hard in his chest in fear. He forces his voice to be calm.

Against all popular opinion he is not dead. Neither is he in Starkhaven, nor another Chantry, or anything of the sort. Sebastian has abandoned his armour; only his bow is kept from his previous life. His hair is brushing his jawline, his eyes are bright against the darkness of dirt-marked skin. He has rough, knee-high travelling boots, dirty brown trousers and a dark blue coat over what might have once been a black shirt.

His hair is dishevelled, but damn him if he doesn’t make it work. Anders rubs a hand over his jaw in jealousy before remembering that Sebastian is a threat.

“I promise I won’t kill you,” Sebastian says firmly.

“And you think I believe you? You seem to be all about breaking vows, Brother,” Anders taunts.

“Do you see a Starkhaven army here?” asks Sebastian. He decides to sit in the hopes that Anders will see him as less of a threat. “I’m not going to kill you.”

“It’s a bit early to be wandering the wilderness,” says Anders. “And no horse? How the mighty have fallen.”

“Stop it!” They all look at Merrill in surprise. “I’m tired of arguing. All anyone does is fight. If you’re going to be trouble, Sebastian, you should just go away. If not, then we’re going to have breakfast, because I’m hungry and I’ve been saving the last of the honey.”

With that, she sits cross-legged by the packs and begins digging through them. Hawke shrugs at Anders, and reluctantly he joins them on the dirt for a patchy meal taken in patchy light. 


	36. Part of the Crew

Teagan always wanted a ship of her own, and Yusef only ever wanted to be First Mate, so Isabela gives their old ship to that pair. And, Isabela says to Fenris, I think he’s a little in love with Teagan. It’ll never work out, says Fenris. Teagan doesn’t bend that way.

The revelation is startling because Isabela didn’t notice, and usually she’d notice that sort of thing as soon as she looks at a person. She looks at Fenris suspiciously, and wonders what else he’s done to her.

They wave goodbye to the other ship sailing happily away, and Isabela and Fenris and Zevran are left on the Tevinter ship. It’s name means ‘glory’, and it was never a slaving ship.

For the first week all was well, and then, as happens, problems begin.

The problems are with the crew.

See, they had a captain. The captain spoke Tevene, and the ship went from A to B pretty simply. It carried passengers, mostly, but sometimes light freight, clothes or food or materials to makes clothes. It was a good life. Then their luck went sour. It didn’t start with Zevran.

First, they ran into pirates, who killed half the crew. It’s a big ship, though, and needs a big crew, so new people were brought on. The new ones didn’t speak Tevene, they were more violent, and the peaceful trips were memories long past. A while later the new captain got into a mess with the admiral of a small pirate navy, and the crew was killed or traded, and so now there’s an amalgamation of sailors who hail from nearly every corner of Thedas. They none of them speak the same language, all of them have different ideas of how to bring a ship together, and now they have three new captains and two of them are elves.

None of the crew are happy.

Isabela thinks they should dump them at the first dock and find a new crew, but Fenris is mindful of the fact that they are in a stolen ship with too many strange crew members and they are hunted by more than Kirkwall. Zevran is mindful of the fact that they’re his crew, and he feels a strange sense of responsibility for them.

“Even though they seem to want to kill you?”

“Most of my closest friends have tried to kill me,” says Zevran with a shrug.

“I’ve never tried to kill you,” Isabela protests.

“Nor I.” Zevran gives them both a smile.

“But you are each very particular friends, and it does not solve our problem.”

“Have sex with the crew?”

Fenris and Zevran share a glance at Isabela’s suggestion.

“I think not,” Fenris says slowly. “Some of the crew are quite…” One of the crew gives a belch so loud that it carries through their cabin door, making his point for him.

“Sex, I am afraid, does not always solve problems,” says Zevran. Isabela takes a moment to pout.

Fenris takes the map and frowns at it. It’s upside-down, but he’s not very good at reading maps even at the best of times. “Where are we? Where’s the nearest port?”

Isabela points, splaying her fingers between each location.

“That’ll take weeks,” says Zevran.

“And it would be better to go further up,” Isabel slides her finger along the coast. “It’s a bigger harbour; we’ll blend in a bit more.

Fenris peers at the upside-down words. “That’s where we got our first crew.”

“We do go through them,” muses Isabela. “Perhaps this time they’ll stick.”


	37. Bothers

“So,” says Hawke. “You left Kirkwall. And then…” she waits for Sebastian to fill in the gap.

“I travelled a while. I intended to go home, but I was nearly there before I realised I do not want to rule.”

“Abandoning duty in favour of desire?” scorns Anders.

“Andy,” snaps Hawke. Merrill shuffles a little closer to him in comfort. She, too, is not thrilled to see the man alive.

“No longer a prince and Andraste’s widower. Don’t tell me you’ve decided to fuck your way down the coast.”

“No, Anders, I’m not, as you so crudely put it, fucking my way down the coast. I’m doing the Maker’s work, where I can.”

“Bullying poor townsfolk out of their hard-earned coin in exchange for empty prayers?”

“Anders!” This time Anders listens to Hawke, and presses his mouth closed.

“May I ask why you thought I was dead?”

“Fenris said you were,” says Hawke.

Sebastian has words on his tongue but they die. He has not allowed himself to think about Fenris since leaving Kirkwall, and other than a few insistent flashes he’s held himself to that. “Where is he?”

“On a ship.”

Oh, Sebastian remembers. Isabela. Of course. “Might I ask what you’re doing here?” he asks.

“Finding my clan,” says Merrill.

“And keeping out of sight of the rest of the world,” Hawke adds. “Apparently people don’t like it when you blow up the Chantry and set a city on fire. Who knew?” Anders tries to curl in on himself, then frowns.

“If you’re not going to kill me, why were you sneaking around our camp?”

“I didn’t know it was you,” says Sebastian. His voice is firm and honest. “I saw your fire last night, and thought to rob your camp while you slept.” Merrill snorts. She’s grown harder, laughs less often, doesn’t innocently wonder at glittering cobwebs on dewy mornings. Her callused hands keep hold of her staff even as she eats.

“You didn’t do a very good job at it.”

“Hush,” says Hawke, and turns to Sebastian. Despite her companions’ remarks none of the are surprised at her next words. “Are you going to travel with us?”

“I have come this far alone,” says Sebastian lightly. “And you clearly do not want me with you.”

“Please,” says Hawke. “You were my friend, once.” Softly, she continues. “If not for my sake than for Fenris’. For just a little while. I would like to know that you are well.” She does not know if she will see Fenris again, but if she does she would like to tell him that Sebastian is alive and alright. She feels that happiness itself would be too much to ask for, but something close to contentment would be good to see.

Sebastian considers a while before making a decision. “I will travel with you until we have found the Dalish camp,” he promises. 


	38. Three's Too Many

Arnald is standing on the docks stretching out his back and yawning widely. It’s midday, but he only just woke up after a long night. He’s a merchant by trade, but the sort that tallies numbers and tells other people to move boxes from one warehouse to another. His head is buzzing with the memory of numbers he doesn’t need, part of his brain still caught up on adding them together and dishing out pay to the right crews.

He watches a ship dock, the wood bumping against the jetty a little too roughly. He grimaces; a new crew, then, one who haven’t done this before. He watches them pull up the sails and haul out the gangplank. They take their sweet time about disembarking, and it’s only when the first few come down tucking purses into their belts that he realises. A crew being disassembled, then.

He idly walks up to one of them and is about to speak when he hears them talking to each other in a language he cannot immediately pick. He can speak most languages, but some he can only say a few words in. Arnald hangs back to wait for the captain to step down.

He sees white hair, shaggy and unkempt.

“Fenris?” he calls, hazarding that there’s only one elf in the world that looks like him. The head pokes up a little more, and an arm waves at him.

“Arnald?”

“You’ve got a different ship!”

“Aye!” The head disappears a moment, then Fenris jogs down the gangplank. He’s grinning, weather-worn and unwashed. He reeks of salt and sweat. “We ran into some troubles and found ourselves with a new ship.”

“And a new crew.”

“Not as good as the ones you found us,” Fenris gestures at the sailors who are making their way down the docks. Arnald would think Fenris was just trying to flatter him, but the sailors look a ragtag bunch of poorly dressed misfits. He can’t imagine captaining them.

“Nice ship, though.”

Fenris shrugs. It’s a big ship; it’s got four masts and more canvas than they know what to do with. It’s fast, at least, and got enough of a hold that the crew can stretch out beneath decks, but Fenris feels like he could get lost in there. “Happen to know a crew that know each other and don’t mind serving under elves?”

“Elves, plural?” Arnald shakes his head. “Can I exchange your stories for breakfast?” He laughs. “You’ve been on a ship for months on end, of course you want breakfast.”

“My companions tell stories better than I do.”

“Nonsense,” says Arnald. “You have a voice made for talking.”

Zevran watches the strange man haul Fenris away, surprised mainly because Fenris is allowing it to happen. “Who is that?” he asks Isabela. Isabela is dealing with the few sailors they had tied up in the brig. She glances over.

“Arnald, I think his name is. He helped us find a crew last time we docked here.” She pays the disgruntled sailors a small sum, much less than their comrades. They try to complain but she gives them a hard look. “If you’d behaved you’d be paid the same as the others. Now get off my ship.”

“Fenris made a friend?” asks Zevran. He doesn’t try to hide his surprise. Though Fenris has become softer the longer they’re at sea he’s still often silent and sullen, not the sort to easily befriend anyone. “Can we meet him?”

 

Drunk on wine and food and gossip they make their way with unsteady steps back up the gangplank to their ship. The few shipmates who they’ve decided to let stay on the crew are keeping a sort of guard, eating a feast of food brought up from the dockside markets and playing cards on the deck, huddled out of the wind. They shake their heads and chuckle to each other as Isabela grabs a fist of elvish hair and kisses one of her companions deeply.

“Must be nice,” sighs Jason.

“Having two lovers?” asks Jezebel. She laughs harshly. “Too difficult by far. If they weren’t paying us so much I’d ditch this crew and find another. Three in a bed is trouble.”

“Far as I can tell, they’ve been together for years,” says Enid.

“That doesn’t make it safe,” says Jezebel. “And together on a ship?” She shakes her head fiercely and puts down a card. “But the pay’s enough that I’ll risk it.”

“And we’re killing slavers,” adds Timot.

The group hum agreement. The pay’s good and the ship’s big enough that they can lie down in their hammocks and almost stretch out their arms without touching anyone else. The dangers of whatever lies ahead aren’t enough of a threat for them to give up on what they’ve got. There might be better ships to sail on, but there are definitely worse. 


	39. Pitiful

Anders is no longer the man who stood at the bow of the Kirkwall ship and wondered what it would be like to let water close over his head. But he was once that man, and memories of being that man linger. Sebastian’s return brings them to the surface, and he finds himself wandering too close to rocky edges, looking down into great valleys. He feels the creature within him stirring, but he ignores it. Whatever it is, spirit or demon, it can stay quiet and buried for all he cares.

If he were stronger perhaps he’d take to the Fade and fight it there, the only way to free himself without, possibly, dying. Except he knows he’s not strong enough, and the only mage he knows who could help him is Merrill, and she’s got demons of her own waiting in the Fade. He doesn’t know how much she trusts them, but he doesn’t want to ask. He’s too afraid of any answer she gives, either that she believes her demons can help fight what was once Justice, or that she was wrong to ever start using blood magic.

He’s heard her whimpering at night while she sleeps, sounds that are doubtless not dissimilar to the noises he makes. With the Fade and the curse of being a Warden weighing on him he doubts he would sleep if it weren’t for the exhaustion they push themselves to each day.

He sleeps, now, dreaming those dreams, and Merrill beside him sharing his blanket with her nose in his hair. Sebastian has made no comment on this arrangement, though he sleeps apart from them.

Sebastian is awake now, talking softly with Hawke.

They aren’t talking about the here and now, that’s too heavy on them already. Instead, they’re talking about their childhood memories, trying to pick the first from the rest. She’s telling him a story about running across fields with Carver, having stolen mushrooms from someone’s garden. She laughs a little as she tells it, remembering the bright sky and the grass lashing at her bare legs, Carver younger than her but keeping up with her strides with an earnest expression on his flushed red face.

“I think,” she pauses, “This is awful, but I think I miss him more than Beth. And I’m not sure my mother ever really cared about me. Perhaps she did, once, but then the twins were born… He would have loved being here, now.” She looks up at the stars. There’s clouds wafting over, the bright moon catching on the grey to turn them silver. The hills are distant and dark, but there’s the rustle of trees and the sound of birds and night creatures moving. Their horses and fire and sleeping companions fill the gaps of peaceful silence. “We always wanted to see the world together.”

“Bethany did not care to travel?” asks Sebastian.

“Apostate,” Hawke reminds him, and notices that Sebastian doesn’t grimace at that word as he once used to. “I think her and Pa just wanted to put down roots. We were always moving, and it was always up to me to make sure the twins had everything together…” She falls silent, remembering one time Bethany left her toy behind and their mother had blamed Hawke. Not herself, not Pa, but Hawke. She hadn’t even been a teenager. She’d tried to sneak back the first night they made camp, but Carver had followed her. They’d fought, but he’d brought her back. That seemed to be how they worked. And now.

Now.

Sebastian touches her hand, bringing her back into the present.

“Anyway,” she says in a thick voice. “He’d love it.”

“My brothers would not,” says Sebastian. “They like adventure so long as there’s a bed at the end of the day.”

“With a warm woman beside them? Or man,” she adds.

“Woman,” says Sebastian, with a little smile. “To lie with a man as with a woman is a sin. Though doing so outside of marriage is also, and my brothers never bothered with that teaching.”

“Do you miss them?”

Sebastian is quiet a while, considering. “You mention animosity with your mother. I think I miss my brothers in the same way you must miss her: I never liked being around them, but I’d rather be in a world with them than not.”

“But you are done seeking revenge?” she asks, with a meaningful look at Anders, who is scarcely sleeping.

“Yes,” sighs Sebastian. “I am done. I cannot return to the Chantry. I thought I could, but my mind, who I am now… That life no longer suits me.”

“I thought the idea of the Chantry was to deny your desires and serve the Maker.”

“There are many ways to serve Him,” he says, but his voice is dull and it does not sound as though he has found this new service. “I find that Chantry life is no longer my calling. Nor is being a Prince,” he adds. “Starkhaven has managed without me, and can do without the death and turmoil a war for the throne would bring.”

“So, what now?” asks Hawke lightly. “Find someone pretty and settle down?”

Sebastian laughs, the sound grating through the stillness of the night. “The only pretty someone I find myself wanting is on a ship.” Hawke takes a second before figuring it out. He does not respond, and she knows. So she was right in suspecting. “Strange how the Maker works things out,” he says glumly.

“I’m not sure I believe in Him,” says Hawke after a pause. She gestures at the blackened landscape. “All of this, the blight, my family, your family, Anders’ life, Merrill’s demon, Fenris… And we’re just a few people in all of Thedas. I don’t believe in Him,” she repeats firmly. “If He is real then where is He?”

Sebastian automatically opens his mouth to admonish her, but the words don’t come. “I,” he begins. He suddenly realises he doesn’t believe so much as he used to, either. He cannot honestly tell her off for her thoughts when they are the same ones lingering in the back of his mind.

“I wish we had alcohol,” says Hawke abruptly. “Drinking and fucking are apparently the two best ways to overcome morosity, and one of them I don’t like and the other I don’t have. Pitiful existence. Are you tired?”

“A little,” he says, though he does not think he can sleep.

Hawke gestures at the two mages sleeping peacefully together. “Let’s join the bundle.”


	40. Three Words

She hasn’t said the words. Neither has Fenris, but Isabela can feel the words on her tongue at every moment, and she’s rather afraid she’ll blurt them out to the wrong person in the wrong moment. Right now, she needs to tell the crew to swab the decks and stow the fishing lines, but she can see Fenris down by the bow on the port side helping with the anchors, and she is afraid that the only thing she’ll tell her sailors is that she loves that elf.

Fenris is unaware of this issue. He doesn’t feel the need so much for words: to him, that first night in the cabin after letting Hawke onto the shore was everything that could be said. His hands keep brushing Zevran’s as they curl the cable and stow it neatly away, and that, too, is a sort of I love you. Fenris doesn’t know to question if his companions understand what he means. He doesn’t know that Zevran and Isabela are all action and no emotion, that for them they need to be told because sex is sex and having someone trail their fingertips along your wrist doesn’t mean love.

To Fenris, allowing them so close is meaning enough. He lets them approach him in the dark, to lie next to him while he sleeps. He lets them stand behind him, he lets them stand between him and his sword.

But for Isabela and Zevran, they need more. They cannot read between the lines because they do not realise there is meaning to be read there. 


	41. If Heroes Cannot Die

“I have a question.”

The question had been bugging her for several kilometres now, and it refuses to leave her mind.

“Yes?”

“You’re all attracted to men, right?”

“Uh,” says Anders.

Hawke takes that as a yes. “Fenris. Is he really that… doable?”

Anders makes a spluttering noise. “If you like your lovers sharp and murderous.”

“He’s pretty,” says Merrill. “I guess. I mean, he’s not very elvish. I’m not sure that I like non-elves. That’s racist, I suppose, but it’s true. I mean, you're alright, but I know you. And his _vallaslin_ is all wrong. I couldn’t do it,” she shakes her head firmly.

“Hmm,” says Hawke. “I can see that he’s attractive, I guess. I just don’t get,” she makes a vague gesture with her hand, "why do you want to touch that. So… intimately.”

“He’s practically your brother,” says Merrill. “Perhaps you can’t -”

Hawke frowns. “Seb’s attractive, right?”

“Sebastian,” he corrects.

“Sorry.” She sounds sincere. “And so’s Anders. Or so I’m told. I just can’t picture it -” she breaks off as they come over a rise.

“When did we come this close to the sea?” asks Merrill. She’s as shocked as Hawke.

“I never said map-reading was my forte,” Anders hastens to remind them, though he feels a twinge of a memory. The Wardens, and travelling, and training. All the Wardens knew how to read a map. Something in his mind twists and he gives a sharp cry of agony.

“Anders!” cries Hawke, rushing to his side. Cool hands are placed on either side of his face, golden eyes meeting his. “What is it? Are you okay?” Someone else touches him.

“It is his demon,” says Merrill softly. “There is something foul about this situation.”

“Can you…?” begins Hawke, before everything fades out for Anders.

Sebastian is told to make camp for them while Hawke and Merrill tend to Anders, but there is little any of them can do except wait.

“Has this happened before?” asks Sebastian.

“Not since Kirkwall.” Hawke is making no secret of her concern for the man, holding his head in her lap and stroking his hair. “I had hoped perhaps Justice had become dormant. Remorseful, even.”

Merrill snorts. “Demons don’t feel remorse.”

“I thought he claimed it was a spirit,” says Sebastian.

“It changed. That creature inside of him is cruel, and bent only on destruction. I have to wonder if perhaps he purposefully misguided Anders to direct us here.”

“Why here?” asks Sebastian, looking around at the windswept grass. They are a little way from the cliff face, back over the rise they had come over so that the cold sea wind does not hit them so fully.

“Perhaps it hoped that we would run into trouble,” suggests Merrill.

“More likely it’s merely because we don’t want to be here,” says Hawke. “Frustrating our efforts of travel is better than lying idle. Is there no way to get him out of him?”

“Not without killing the host,” says Merrill.

Sebastian feels that perhaps this is it, this is his calling. The Maker wanted him here to strike down Anders, and he finds himself unsheathing his knife. A hand grips his wrist.

“If you kill him, I will kill you,” says Hawke. “I claim him under my protection, and you know I am good at murder.”

“I can’t just sit here. After everything he did-!”

“I thought you had given up that path,” says Hawke, calmly sitting as Sebastian rises in a rush and begins pacing.

“I have,” he scowls. “But if that creature is doing such things as this, now, for no purpose…” He pauses, shakes his head, and continues to stamp down the grass in heavy strides. “This cannot stand. I will not stand for it.” Merrill pokes out a hand and catches him by the ankle, tumbling him down into the grass. He gives a surprised yelp, and Hawke chuckles. Sebastian growls and stands up again. “I’m going to see if I can figure out where we are,” he says, and stalks away.

“Perhaps you should not have tripped him,” says Hawke.

“He said he would not stand for it…” Merrill brushes the back of her hand over Anders’ cheek, and sits back on her heels. “I dislike what is happening here. The demons I contact have never done such a thing.”

“Anders never learned the sort of control you did,” suggests Hawke. “You have always distrusted your demons, but he accepted Justice.”

“If I were able I would free him,” says Merrill, but as soon as she has said it she shakes her head. “But his choices are his own. I cannot change that.”

“It would not be a world I’d want to live in if our choices were so easily cast aside,” says Hawke, but the words weigh heavily on her. A world where consequences matter less would be a less meaningful world, but it would, perhaps, be more relaxing. And perhaps Anders would be okay.


	42. Born To Kill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shamelessly borrowed from the opening scene in 'Born To Kill'

It’s a bar, not quite so rank as the Hanged Man, but not quite so comfortable, either. The floor is slightly sticky, the tables much too shiny, and there’s a fiddler in the corner, playing to a nearly empty room. There’s a man drinking beer and reading a letter, folding the pages and then smoothing them out to reread them again. He runs his fingers over the words, moving his mouth as he reads. There’s a woman behind the bar, a little too old for her makeup and a little too fat for her clothes. She’s chatting with a couple down the other end of the bar when they come in.

Zevran sits down at the bar, and gestures at the woman.

“What have you got?” She rattles off a list. “That last one, is that wine?” The woman nods. “Got a taste for wine, got a…” he glances at Isabela, who is moving towards the fiddler, rolling her hips and tapping her feet on the sticky stones in time with the music. “A friend,” he says, “who loves wine. Insists on the best.”

“This isn’t the best, but it’s the best you’ll get around here,” promises the woman. It’s a bar on the top of a cliff in the middle of nowhere, the closest town a comfortable walk away.

“A glass of that, then.”

“Anything for your,” the woman hesitates. “Her?”

Isabela is talking to the fiddler, talking him into playing something else.

“No,” says Zevran. “I think she’s occupied.”

“That’s my son,” says the woman proudly. “He’s going to play in the city one day, for the big houses.”

Zevran nods unenthusiastically, and she retreats to get his wine.

Isabela has talked the woman’s son into playing something more upbeat, something she can dance to. Her necklace jingles, and she looks at Zevran and grins, and he watches her, remembering how her skin feels on his lips.

There’s a rattling on the windows, and someone calls through the wall before opening the door.

“Rosie!” the man yells. “It’s us!” The woman pushes a glass - an actual glass! - of wine towards Zevran.

“Oh, hello,” says one of the men, skinny and tall and shifting his hips in time with Isabela’s. Zevran glances at him, but he’s not worth watching. Zevran’s seen prettier hips, and there’s some right there. Isabela catches Zevran’s eye and winks, thrusting gently at the air.

“She’s a looker, ain’t she,” says the other man. “Go on, son, have some fun.” The man giggles and nods, and the other leans down on the bar next to Zevran, leans up close and spits in his ear, “bet she’s a bitch in bed.”

“Her name’s Isabela,” says Zevran, pulling away. The man’s beard scrapes on Zevran’s neck, and then he’s talking to Rosie again, his voice loud and obnoxious.

The other man grinds up against the air by Isabela, grinning down at her, at her tightly laced shirt. Isabela gives a tight smile back. She looks at Zevran, who blinks back, and turns to watch the couple down the bar.

The fiddler doesn’t notice the tension between his dancers and keeps playing. He enjoys the song, the way his fingers get to leap over the strings. He scarcely notices the man’s hands cross the distance to Isabela. They touch her waist, slide down over her hips, touching the skin her short shirt does not cover.

“Haven’t danced like this since my last lover,” leers the man.

“Fascinating,” says Isabela. “You should get your hands off me, if you ever want to dance again.”

“Oh, don’t be like that, baby,” the man pushes closer. He’s either not hard or not very big, his pants smooth against her arse, or perhaps it’s just the way he’s trying to move against her. “I’m fun, you look like fun. We could be fun together.”

“One more warning,” says Isabela. She knows she doesn’t look like much, soft skin and big brown eyes, no pants and too much jewellery. The man doesn’t move away from her; instead, his fingers hook under the band of her underwear. She twists. She punches him in the throat.

The fiddle squeaks as the player notices his audience, and drops his bow.

The man laughs.

She punches him again, and again, and he laughs and bounces away.

“You want it like that, huh, baby?”

Zevran watches. The other man watches, and laughs. The couple down the end of the bar are doing nothing, because no one else is doing anything, and the man refolds his letter with nervous fingers and stumbles to pick up his mug. He hasn’t even noticed the commotion.

Isabela has not gone for her knives, not yet, and she throws another punch. She doesn’t get to do hand-to-hand combat like this very often, and she knees the man in the stomach and throws him back into a chair. He’s laughing, and she kicks him again, grabs his hair and hauls him up and shoves her fist deep into his stomach.

The man beside Zevran is moving, and Zevran puts out a hand. “You really shouldn’t interfere,” he says. There’s a smash, and blood billows from the man’s nose, and Isabela’s fist strikes it again.

“She’s gonna kill him!”

“Probably,” says Zevran. He sips the wine. It’s not the best, as the woman promised, but it’s not the worst he’s had before. His hand tightens around the man’s arm as he feels him try to move. “She warned him.”

The woman is backing away. She knows that the fight’s only going to get worse, but she still flinches when the man lunges at Zevran. The elf dodges easily, but his wine is spilt all over the wood. The glass smashes, and rolls onto the floor, and if Zevran were Fenris his feet would be bleeding. The glass cracks under his boots as he steps towards the man.

“If you leave now, I guarantee you will live.”

“Whatever,” scorns the man, and he lunges again. Zevran, lighter and thinner and more used to fighting, ducks and twists, and with his knife slices at the man’s hand. A finger drops, and hits his boot. There’s a pause, Isabela panting and the man beneath her bleeding, Zevran waiting for his opponent to admit defeat and leave only missing a finger. The man screams, and with his other hand grabs the rest of the broken wine glass and tries to smash it into Zevran’s eyes.

The fight is short, and Zevran finishes him quickly. The couple down the end of the bar have curled together by their chairs, and the woman behind the bar gasps in fear as Isabela stands from where she was straddling the bloody body of the man. Her shirt is flecked, and there’s a scowl on her face.

“I just wanted to dance,” she growls. “Give me whiskey.” The woman is slow to respond, and Isabela snaps her fingers impatiently. “Our dead friends will offer up the coin to pay for damages, I’m sure,” she nudges one of the bodies with her toe.

“I know them,” says the woman. Her voice is hard. “I can’t let you leave for killing them.”

“I would like to see you try and stop us,” says Zevran.

The woman hands a bottle of whiskey over, and Isabela snatches it, takes the cork in her teeth and spits it out. The door opens as she gulps it down, and everyone in the bar except them flinch. A white-haired elf stands dark against the bright sun outside. He looks around the room, and presses two fingers to his forehead, as though he’s suddenly been hit by a headache.

“Guys,” he says. “I thought we weren’t going to kill anyone today.”

“He,” Isabela points at one of the dead men, “was touching me.”

“That is true,” supplies Zevran. “He provoked her.”

The woman sees this new elf, hears that voice, and decides she’s better off living than trying to battle these three. Fenris gives a laborious sigh.

“The tide is coming; we should leave.”

Isabela takes another swig from the bottle, stepping over a pool of blood and coming to settle her hands on Fenris’ hip. He wipes a bit of blood from her cheek. The movement is tender, one lover to another.

Zevran pauses by the door, and turns to look at the man with the letter. He’s shivering, fingers gripping the rumpled paper. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he says. The man stares at the elf, who blinks back at him with an honest expression. The man nods, a tentative movement.

The door swings shut behind Zevran.


	43. Cabbages

Sebastian stamps a little way, his boots making thuds on the dirt that aren’t at all satisfactory, so after a bit he stops and just walks with a frown on his face. The wind is cold and salty. He looks over the water, searching for any sign of life. Just as he thinks there is none he notices a fuzzy spec, and narrows his eyes at it. Perhaps a boat, perhaps not. Either way it is too far to tell. Merrill might be able to see it, but he’s not willing to go back to them just yet. He walks up a little rise to look down the coast, and sees a building. Lovely, he thinks. He’d like to have contact with someone other than his fellow travellers.

It’s further than it looks, and by the time he gets there the sun is high above him. He pushes open the door and is startled by what he sees: red, dark and congealed on the wooden floor. Bodies. Blood splattered across tables, as though someone purposefully came and painted the room.

He checks each body, searching for someone living. There are traces of hasty footprints through the mess, so at least someone survived the attack. He growls, and kicks a fallen chair.

 

Hawke is non-plussed.

“We used to leave bloodied rooms all over the place, what’s the big deal?” she asks. She’s playing some game with Merrill, something Sebastian can’t figure out. It looks like poor-man’s witchcraft, a bundle of sticks all tossed together.

“People are dead!”

“Do you know who killed them?”

“There was a ship,” he attempts, but Anders sneers at him.

“Then they’re long gone. The better thing to realise is, if there’s a building, there’s a town, and if there’s a town, there’s food.” Immediately Merrill touches her fingers to the tip of her nose; so does Anders. Hawke is carefully using one stick to lever another off the pile, and gives a yell when it’s free only to see her friends.

“Blast,” she says. “That’s me again, is it?”

“Well, I can’t,” says Merrill, gesturing at the tattoos across her face. “Don’t buy cabbage.”

“That was one time!” Hawke argues as she hauls herself to her feet. “And there was nothing else available. Admit it, you enjoyed that cabbage.”

“Did not,” says Merrill.

“You did a little,” counters Anders. Sebastian is looking between them as though they’re shooting rainbows from all their orifices. He hasn’t heard them banter like this yet, grins twitching at the corners of their mouths, eyes crinkling and their bodies relaxed. They’re completely at ease around each other, he realises. The only tension has been because of him. 

He walks with Hawke to the town and helps her purchase supplies, and then he tells her that he is leaving them. She protests, but only weakly. She has her path, he has his, and they are uncomfortable when walked together. She hugs him, and hopes that this isn't truly goodbye.


	44. A Good Day

Isabela climbs the rigging, stepping with confidence across the yards to crawl along another rope up and up until she stands on a split of wood beside their flag. The black piece of ribbon ripples idly in the wind; the sea is nearly calm, and the sailors below are spending their time mending the sails and fishing. She can see Fenris on his perch on the bow, arms folded over one knee and chin resting on his forearms as the waves lap against the wood. Zevran is elsewhere, playing cards, sharpening his knives, braiding his hair. The usual sort of thing he does. Isabela imagines him standing in front of the mirror flexing his thigh muscles, and giggles. The elf is probably hidden away doing squats, or some dull thing to keep his physique perfect.

The water is crisp and clear down far and deep. The sun is just right that from this angle she can see the fish that her crew are trying to catch, a few darker, larger shapes moving beyond them. Sharks, probably, and she calls down to the fishers to be careful offloading the waste. Isabela doesn’t mind sharks - she admires them for taking what they need from the sea - but she needs her crew alive and well, and she’s heard stories of sharks launching themselves at ships in their eagerness for food. She doesn’t need the hull cracked by a hungry, over-large fish.

It is an idle day, a lazy day, and she climbs down to find a place to string ropes that she can lie on, balanced on the narrow, twisted coils as easily as if she were a cat.

The water laps at the boat, the dice roll on the deck and the sailors mutedly enjoy their games. Occasionally there is a call as someone wins a hand.

A movement catches her eye; Zevran, climbing out of the hull and walking across the deck. He answers a few calls from the crew, the laughter muted by the time it reaches Isabela. He walks with catlike steps to the prow of the ship, where Fenris starts and shuffles over to give him room on his narrow perch. Zevran leans against him, kisses his cheek, the corner of his mouth, his lips. He puts his hand on Fenris’ neck and sighs into his mouth, thighs pressed together and feet dangling over the water. They break apart and lean against each other to watch the sun flicker over the small waves. Fenris says something, and Zevran leans back to see Isabela sitting above the deck, watching them. He kisses his fingertips and holds them aloft, and she smiles down at them.

It’s a good day, and tomorrow will be a good day, and she has a ship and she has Zevran and she has Fenris, and Isabela cannot imagine she will ever have a day that isn’t good again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As per usual, this went on longer than I intended; as per usual, I've probably finished it with too many loose ends. I hope you've enjoyed reading it.


End file.
